


Book I: Bootprints in the Snow

by TheLightdancer



Series: By Fire and Water, Earth and Air [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fire Nation Katara, Katara adopted by the Fire Nation Royal Family, Ozai (Avatar) Being a Terrible Parent, Ozai is his own warning, Ursa tries her best, War is cruelty and you cannot refine it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-19
Updated: 2021-03-10
Packaged: 2021-03-18 03:06:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 64,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28860033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLightdancer/pseuds/TheLightdancer
Summary: Katara gets lost in the snows around her village when she encounters Fire Nation soldiers. From this so much else changes, and all else follows.
Relationships: Hakoda/Kya (Avatar), Iroh/Iroh's Wife (Avatar), Ozai/Ursa (Avatar)
Series: By Fire and Water, Earth and Air [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2116383
Comments: 31
Kudos: 43





	1. All Along the Watchtower:

Destiny came to the world in the waning years of the Hundred Year War begun in the days of Sozin, first of the imperial overlords of the Fire Nation, in the form of boots in the snow. It was a harsh time even in the harsher elements of the austral world, where the Southern Water Tribes so deeply battered by the continual predations of the Fire Nation were struck again. Those Waterbenders who remained were hidden and went underground, preserving their arts and seeking to do little to draw the terrible gaze of Azulon the Bloody, as the nations beyond the Fire Nation called him, and Azulon the Awe-Inspiring as the Fire Nation spoke of him.

Once they had been many, then, with the capture of one of the last of the truly flamboyant, Hama, there was but one family left. And in that family there was one child, one Waterbender, the last of those of her people who held this art within the very marrow of her being. Were she older in the blizzard that had struck when the Fire Nation raiders came it would have been less of a thing to be stuck, isolated, in the howling gales of snow and ice, for not only would she have had stronger furs around her, the very power within her would have given her means to handle the frozen wastelands as easily as the Fire Nation could handle volcanic regions, or the Earth Kingdom the steppe and the desert.

That was, however, not how it was on this day. On this day, a three year old girl, then going by the name of Katara, daughter of Hakoda and Kya, had been playing a game with her older brother, annoying him by saying "I'm Sokka" purely to get giggles out of him reacting and overreacting to it, had run into the blizzard, with a child's speed and a child's innocence. Now she was alone, and cold, and in the time since she'd run the vast ships had come and fire and fury stalked the snows.

Now she was alone, and she was very, very cold, and shivering. The snows were not her friend, then, and when she was older it was seen, as her adoptive father would so carefully mold her to see for a long time that nearly dying at the hands of her own element had shown her only that water could not be trusted. Fire was lord of all things, and it brought order out of chaos. She was alone in the snows, shivering, her breath misting.

\------

"Prince Lu Ten," one of his soldiers called.

"There are no Waterbenders here. Why are we out here in this damned blizzard?"

"I saw something." His voice was crisp, then, for at this time he was the dedicated soldier of the Long War that was seen as its ideal. He knew that if he found Waterbenders that he would kill them all.

In the snows walked five Fire Nation troops, and the heir to the heir to the throne.

Their boots crunched in the snow and there was a strange reminder here that water might be less dynamic and flamboyant than fire but no less mighty. It humbled him, to feel the degree to which he needed his own element to prevail.

The non-bending soldiers were not happy with him, but he did not particularly care. It was not his problem that they lacked the inner fires that could prevail in any cold, were one to still them properly.

There had been motion in the blizzard, and he did not know what to make of it.

\------

Xin Lu paused.

Noise. Motion, a whimper of pain.

What-

He felt Power before he saw it, the unconscious conjuration of a child whose strength took that moment to first show itself, in desperation against the freezing cold, in a bid to keep herself alive. She was three, then, and she knew not what she did nor what she was doing, only that the snow carried in the howling gale responded, forming a bit of a wall around her, a conjuration weak and unconscious. As was shown when the wall cracked and dissolved with steam and slush when a ball of flame erupted into it.

\-----

Lu Ten saw the flash of light and followed, as did the other soldiers.

\------

She saw her first Fire Nation soldier then, at the age of three, a figure clad in red with pointed pauldrons with an upturned curve, flames dancing at his fingers. They were bright and they hurt her eyes, and she was cold. She whimpered again, cold and feeling darkness dancing at the edge of her vision.

\-----

"Corporal Xi, what is it?"

"A waterbender, my Prince. The last one of the South."

The memory of Hama and the things that she had done when she had discovered that horrid aspect of how blood, itself a form of water, could be manipulated by one easily talented, led the other Firebenders minus Prince Lu Ten to form fire themselves.

\-------

Katara's vision wavered, darkness growing, and there was lights. Anguta's lanterns.

She whimpered again, a low keen.

\-----

"That is a child, a baby." It was the Prince's voice, wavering for a moment.

"You would kill a child?" 

"I believe Prince Ozai is correct, and so was the illustrious Fire Lord Sozin. Kill them all, small and big. Nits make lice."

Lu Ten glared.

"That," he growled, "Is. A. Baby."

He stooped down, and he picked her up.

\-------

Warmth, warmth. She curled up, exhaustion and the cold stilled next to a furnace heat that felt.....

\-------

"I will take her to the Palace."

"Why?" 

"Her parents, if she has any, did not care enough about her not to leave her to wander into a blizzard to die. If they care so little, we will care moreso."

For a moment there was indecision, and then they shrugged.

"Well I'm all for not working any harder than I have to," grunted the corporal, and with that the rest of the Fire Nation soldiers began the journey back to the ship, and to the long voyage north. When they turned the blizzard halted, the silence deafening, and no new snow fell for a couple of days.

\-------

Hakoda and Kya left the very second the snows ceased to fall, moving as swiftly as snowshoes and desperation allowed. They found their daughter's footprints and the ways her increasingly cold body dragged along in the snow....and then Fire Nation soldier bootprints, much deeper, ringing where the trail stopped. And then nothing.

Kya clung to Hakoda, not letting herself weep in public, not like this.

When Sokka asked when Katara would come back, all they did was look at him funny and they told him nothing at all. It took him years to realize that not only was she not coming back, but the Fire Nation, Azulon's barbaric horde that rampaged along the world and sought to lay waste to anything that could resist them, had killed a baby in the snows, and did so in a way that left nothing even to bury.

\-------

The ship that took her to the Caldera was strange. No house of ice, but one of metal that creaked. She was lonely and she was afraid and only the big man called Lu Ten understood at all how to talk to her. She'd told him her name. Katara. He'd smiled and told her it was a pretty name and he helped her feel warm and like she was on a big adventure. They left the frozen realms of the Austral lands, and journeyed north. As the air warmed she was given small red robes, ones more suited to the warm air and was soon held on Prince Lu Ten's shoulder to see something she had never seen before.

Water, her element, in a vast and sprawling greenish-blue tinge, a salt smell to the air. It was the Ocean, vast and dark and intimidating, a part of her element she would come to accept as her symbols and her spirit more than the frozen ice and wastelands of the Water Nations.

She saw for the first time the islands of the Fire Nation, held on Prince Lu Ten's shoulders, and she smiled at him as he did at her, not understanding the at first quizzical and bemused and then slightly afraid look on the tall and bearded man who greeted Prince Lu Ten.

The last Waterbender of the South, though there were plenty in the North and the mighty centralized state there held firm against the Fire Nation ringed by its element in a way the South had not. A baby of three on the shoulder of Prince Lu Ten, taken into a strange and wondrous place.

That was her first impression, very different colors, shiny things. A place of wonder.

\-------

Katara spent time by herself, and was very lonely, for a span that seemed eternal to a three year old with no playmates and no place to be, a time in which unknown to her there was a strange change that would fix her life. Ursa had seen the baby and wanted her children, much younger than Lu Ten and far too young as yet to see the long and brutal war at first-hand range, to have a new sister and a new playmate. Ozai had dismissed the idea altogether, and suggested something much simpler. Her family, as stunted and primitive as they were, did not want her, so the most merciful thing to do was leave an unwanted and unloved child to die on the outskirts of the capital, in the harsh lands near the nearest volcano.

He did not understand beyond that weakness, contemptible and so many other things, as he saw it of Iroh and Ursa why they looked at him with shock and revulsion. He did understand a disquiet in his father's gaze, and that shamed him. It was in the first of many paradoxes in Katara's life that the first suggestion by Ozai to have her slain out of hand as one that he viewed beneath him fixed her fate, as Azulon told him that one who voiced so shameful a sentiment as out of the older and more squalid times before Sozin should instead take the child into his family after all.

\-----

Katara was sitting by the lake, watched carefully by two of the courtiers, when she felt that same accidental burst of power, her loneliness and a sense of wanting someone, anyone, to actually see she was there, led her to move her hands to one of the lakes near the palace. The waters stirred and a tendril began to be drawn upward, a conjuration crude by Waterbender standards, but in a child of three something wondrous to have seen at all.

Ozai was there, then, with Ursa, and where Ursa stared blankly at the sight, Ozai's gaze went from hostile to cocking his head, and then he smiled a grin that would have made Ursa the more fearful had she seen it crossing his face.

Perhaps, mused Ozai, there would be possibilities here.

And so was it that when she heard voices clearing their throats that she dropped the tendril of water with a splash and turned to see a very tall man with a long pointed beard looking at her, an intensity in his gaze that made her tremble in fear.

Ozai spoke in the Fire Nation tongue, something she'd learned on the voyage, though she caught only two words "Her name."

"Katara," she said, her voice trembling slightly as she wanted to curl up and hide from the gaze of the terrible man looking at her.

He knelt down beside her and he smiled. She liked Prince Lu Ten's smile and those of some of the other Fire Nation soldiers she'd seen. She did not like _his_ smile, not at all.

"No, you are not Katara, not any more. You are of my family now, and no daughter of the House of Ozai will use a barbarian name."

Too many words that she did not understand. Only "No," "Katara," and "Family.'

"You are Himiko, daughter of the Sun."

She stared blankly.

Ursa gave Ozai a sharp look, not quite trusting her husband's seeming change of thought, and yet though she did not like his smile and something about him made her afraid, when Ozai held open his arms, Katara walked toward them, and let herself be held. So began the life of Himiko, daughter of two kingdoms, and the march to the end of the Hundred Year War. 


	2. Children of the Sun:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ozai tells his children stories of the Gods and Goddesses of the Fire Nation

Ozai smiled, his smile retaining the lack of kindness and sincerity that would give him the name of the Serpent Prince among his detractors. When he became the heir and then the Fire Lord that name was struck from the records and bad things happened to those known to have said it. For now, though, he was the younger son, the royal spare, without any impression of inheriting the throne. His father was off waging war, and so was his brother and his nephew. And he? He spent time idling at a desk running the Fire Nation and having to the lengthy and unglamorous aspects of keeping its new autocracy running.

No less important a set of deeds, but not the ones to earn repute to match the Dragon of the West.

His adoptive daughter was five, now, the youngest of his three children. She still spoke some of the primitive language she'd spoken as a baby and had a heavy accent of the Austral lands underneath a Fire Nation dialect. For now, he could not change that. If fortune should ever favor him enough to draw him into a position of glory and power, however.....

His hands steepled. He had spent another long day giving orders, ensuring inspections sent to colonies and through the main islands. Bullying one of the greater lords of one of the more distant islands who'd gotten too uppity when Ozai Lackland, as he'd called him to his face, had sent him orders as if he was a prince. He ached to burn the man alive slowly and attentively in front of his family, but for now he truly was Ozai Lackland, and required to kneel within the shadows of Iroh and of Lu Ten. That chafed at him most. A young man who'd disobeyed orders to observe during a raid on the Southern Water Tribe and marched straight into a blizzard was feted as a hero. 

He, scion of the Palace who did far more to keep the kingdom running was seen as a bully and a monster (albeit in his more introspective moods, which in this phase of his life he still had, he admitted the latter view did have more than a bit of truth to it). He obeyed orders, he kept the kingdom together.

All of this ran through his mind as he sat before his children, who'd had another day of playing together. Himiko had been a curiosity fostered on him as an insult by Lu Ten, who prevented any of his own ambitions from shining.

He had taken to telling them the old stories, stories that predated the time of the First Avatar, and traces of a lost world that had existed before then. Stories of creation. Yesterday he had told them the tale of the very first Gods and Goddesses, father and mother of them all. Izanagi and Izanami, who had seen the land where the Fire Nation would be born and had stirred it with spears, and from the disturbance of the water rose the volcanic majesty of that land. The August Darkling Star, the embodiment of Chaos and Destruction, whose whispers had drawn the sundered lines between the first God and the first Goddess, drawn her into the land of the dead, where she would marry the dreadful Yaoma, and from that union would be born Himiko, Goddess of the Sun.

In the earliest days, when Firebending was still new and the dragons had shaped the understanding of it, before the revolution under his grandfather following the fall of Avatar Roku, it had been said that Himiko was the ancestress of the Royal Family, explaining their golden eyes, like little suns. That was not the tale he wished to tell here, not with this little brown girl who was absorbing tales of a properly civilized culture and not odds and sods skulking in the snows, brutish primitives broken beneath the weight of a proper culture that knew more to do with the arts of empire and kingdom-building than not.

There were other tales, though, ones worthier to tell here. Zuko, his eldest, his son, was a weakling and a milksop. It was a further sense of shame to Ozai Lackland that Lu Ten, much as he despised him for denying him any prospect of a greater destiny properly had earned a reputation as a hero and as a master of war. His son was lagging in Bending capacity next to his sisters, even the primitive of the snows. He couldn't resist a brief glare at his son, one that intensified when his son cringed rather than defying him. The warmer look at Azula and Himiko got the two girls to giggle and that too irritated him enough he was tempted to conjure lightning to teach them royal dignity....but he paused.

"Well, my children," he began, his phrasing the kind that Iroh and Ursa, who in his view were far too soft and too indulgent, called grandiloquent on a good day, "Let me tell you another tale of the Gods and the Goddesses.

Yesterday you learned of the formation of our islands by Izanagi and Izanami. And of their daughter, the _first_ Himiko, born to Izanami and to Yaoma, the King of the Land of the Dead."

The children nodded, excited. Even his milksop son enjoyed the myths, the cruder and the gorier parts as well as the more splendid one.

"Today, the tale of Himiko, daughter of the First Goddess and of the King of the Grave. Himiko was born in the first light of the first day of the first month of the first year of Izanami's descent into the Underworld. Born of a Goddess of high Heaven, she gleamed like the Sun, her sphere. In that time before she ascended the world was and dark and it was cold, and the other Gods went about swaddled in thick furs, in a time of misery and of sorrow. This was the Age of Darkness, where Ice and Snow prevailed and the first men and ancestors of men slept. Even the Airbenders could not master the freezing chill of the ice, even the Waterbenders slept in darkness lest the chill enter their bones and leave them as ice, in an eternal scream.

And the sturdy sons of Earth, in its vast and sprawling domain, slept in the stone, awaiting the time when the rays of light would awaken them.

Yet Himiko, who sought to rise, sent a small spark of flame to the High Heaven where Izanami, who had rejected his wife when she had returned from the grave and shown its caresses, rejected her light in turn. Better, in his view, that mortals sleep and the spirit world know only fear and trembling. And in that time his wrath kindled new will, and new life, as the snow came to life and the ice with it, and they formed great giants, fierce and brawling things. They too went around swaddled in thick furs, wearing necklaces of bone,taken from slumbering mortals."

Himiko blinked. She shivered, the memory of an old winter seared into her minds, of the heaviness of her limbs then. She could _see_ the Frost Giants, tall and dark and glowering in the snows. If they looked somewhat like the Firebenders who'd stood over her with sparks of light in endless snow, she, already at the age of five, had learned not to say this. Papa Ozai did not like such statements and his wrath quite literally _burned_ if they were spoken.

"The Frost Giants ruled, and they grew grew and swelled monstrous, and the clamor of the Gods began, against the new ways. The lords of Ice and Snow built great houses, blocks of ice in domes, and they cast their power across a world that became an eternal realm of ice and snow, from horizon to horizon.

Beneath this the Gods of the High Heaven looked and dismissed things, for such were the works of the Frost Giants that they, the children of Ice, were not seen as a challenge to them. And then one of them, a great Lord, Aglooik, sought to build a great ice-bridge to reach the High Heaven and to threaten the Gods. At first they dismissed the deed, for the giants of the Ice and the Snow were primitives, brutish things that were immense in size and strength, but lacking in wit and in wisdom.

None may gainsay the might of the Gods, but even the Gods know the pitfalls of hubris, to seek to challenge the harsh writ of Dharma and of its wheel. And so they did. And so the children of the Ice, seen as children of weakness and brute strength used that brute strength to build a mountain of ice, one that was growing larger and came to seek to threaten the great Heaven itself.

And at last, Izanami, Lord of the High Heaven looked down in fear and he grasped that his dismissal of the lords of Ice and Snow meant that they, brutish things, were threatening the heart of civilization."

Himiko shivered. She looked at her hands. She was capable of manipulating ice and snow, she knew. She didn't know how she did it, but at times she went to the lakes near the palace and could turn parts of them to ice thick enough for her to walk on. Zuko and Azula couldn't, they slid around and had hurt themselves. She rubbed her forearm where Papa Ozai had shown how angry he was at that. Part of her felt that similarity and wondered......

"So he sent the Storm-God, Zuko," and the two girls looked at their older brother, who jerked himself awake from where he was starting to nod off when he heard his name, his father's gaze hooded and he flushed with a sickly grin, knowing that Father would not look kindly on him for this.

"To retrieve Himiko from the Kingdom of Yaoma. Down descended the storm-god, past the realm of Ice and Snow where the monsters in fur and ivory walked. Down he descended, past the seven gates of the Dead, each marked by a sigil of the seven lords of the seven afterlives.

Before the throne of Yaoma and Izanagi, he offered fire, in the name of Agni, Lord of Purity, and begged them to send their daughter the Sun to the realm of Mortals. For a time the lords of the Underworld did not care any more than the Lords of the High Heaven, until Zuko wept and in his weeping his thunderbolts shone and reflected the great mountain reaching nearly to Heaven. Izanagi regretted deeply that she had become sundered from her husband and her beloved, and so she at last released her daughter to rise.

And so dawned the first day.

When the rays of the Sun cast by the ascension of the Daughter of the Grave, Queen of the Sun, rose, the Frost Giants began to tremble. It was as blood on the horizon, a low red light that all darkness and all of its monsters feared. Himiko, first of all Firebenders, rose and in her light was kindled wrath. Wrath against the Gods of the High Heaven who had cast her away, unwanted and unloved, from a family that did not want her"

Himiko couldn't resist looking down, a tear streaking down her face. Her brother and sister put hands on her shoulder, and none of them saw the way Ozai's lips twitched, the pleasure in that twitch. His new daughter may be of primitive stock but she could learn lessons this young in a manner that left him anticipating what she might be at Lu Ten's age.

"Wrath against the darkness and the cold that overcome the world. She did not linger to freeze and to let the cold reach out to her, her light blazed, and as dawn became day, fire covered the world, and fire and ice and went to strife against each other. Ice became water, and the land was separated from the waters, each in its place. The waters became that which could be drunk, lakes and rivers, the snows frozen in high places in mountains and in the Boreal and Austral lands. The rest the deep salt sea, wine-dark and of hidden places.

With the land exposed, the first of the Firebenders brought forth life from darkness, and the slumbering children of humanity awake and bowed before her glory, as those of the other lands do before our great armies and our great will. So is it that we, descendants of the realms our Gods made, continue their great work, now and in all time, unto the end of all things."

All of the children clapped, even little Himiko, who only saw her father smiling and did not see the fuller nature of that smile.

That night Ozai read more of Waterbending theory, and found to his fascination that there was much here he could take, and train her, in ways not entirely like how the Fire Nation trained its own people, but akin to them. Water was more than the stoic elements of Boreal and Austral primitives.

It too could be tempestuous, and the theory of the Oceanic focus, rather than the quiet still streams encouraged by the primitives....

He grinned.

And the next day his new lessons with Princess Himiko began, lessons done with as much care as with Azula. No imperfections were allowed even for her. Darker might her skin be, but she was a weapon as much as Azula, and one needed to treat weapons with care, to give them their full power....and to make certain that they were aimed only at the right targets.

There was insight here too that made Lackland realize he could afford some patience, even hope. His brother and his nephew, after all, were fighting in war. War meant fighting, fighting meant killing. It might be somewhat treacherous to hope his kin died on the battlefield but if so it was, Ozai could not bring himself to care overmuch. And for the first time, he began to not only endorse Iroh and Lu Ten's heroism on the battlefield, but to quietly intrigue to get the army to advocate sending the Crown Prince and his heir to the fiercest fighting, to showcase the great strength of the Dragon of the West and of his heir.

As the ocean drew back in low tide and came in at high tide, so would the rise of Ozai be, as long as fortune chose to smile upon him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: This is based on a mishmash of Indo-Iranian and Japanese mythology, as is my overall take on Fire Nation culture. Think elements of Shinto meets Hinduism going straight from Tokugawa to WWII Japan.


	3. Ice and Fire:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Himiko has a bad dream and talks with her brother and sister. 
> 
> Lu Ten comes home for a visit.

_Hiniko's bedroom:_

Before she'd gone to bed, Himiko had heard a voice in a dream, a low voice that spoke with warmth and love. It spoke with an accent like her own in the language she remembered increasingly only words from. The woman who spoke it had raven-dark hair, eyes as blue as the ocean, and a smile to warm her heart. She told her stories, too, like Papa Ozai, and they too had their monsters. Agnuta, Lord of the Dead, who shone his lanterns to snare the unwary. And Amarok, who took those who hunted at night and who went astray.

Amarok the demon-wolf, a hound of darkness with eyes that blazed with lights like those of Agnuta.

She did not wonder then why she wanted to hear that voice more, nor whose voice it was. She had only been three and there were memories, fading with time and with what it was to live in this strange new place as one of Ozai's daughters. Names. Kya, Hakoda. Sokka. Names and a tongue that slowly faded from memory. 

She closed her eyes with tears flowing down her cheeks not knowing why they did, nor why she felt empty, sometimes, and alone. Why she wanted blue eyes in a dark face, not golden eyes in a pale one.

She had learned the stories, Sozin's Comet and the heroic defense against the aggressive assault by the Airbender pirates, who had sought to thwart the vision of glory before it began. The Long War, and its marches, battles and generals and kings that blurred into memories. She learned deeply of the history of the Fire Nation and Papa Ozai was teaching her to Waterbend by a way that she did not know the primitives of the North, as Papa Ozai called them, would have disapproved of but she had some reasons to believe it. The primitives did not believe in the worth of women, nor would they have seen her as the cute and willing learner that Papa Ozai did.

Papa Ozai's happiness was good. He did not burn her or her siblings as much (and she had developed, from sheer necessity, healing to a level much more advanced than her age, and had removed scars from her brother and sister and herself. This part of her mind and her skills was already older than her years and it was a part of her that felt worn and afraid). He still burned them, for he was Fire, and Fire burned. Water? Water could drown, water could.....

She shivered in the sheets and prayed for sleep, for too much thinking on water brought back The Cold and she did not want to think of snow and the feeling of her body slowing down, until Prince Lu Ten had saved her. Nor did she like too much to think of dark faces that had shone with love and then left her to die.

Sleep stole in on her as she tossed and turned and then she dreamed.

\-------

_The Cold. It had returned and it had returned upon her and with her in a dreadful force, the howling sound with an eerie shriek like the wailing of the souls in Yaoma's court. The Cold stole into her again and she started to feel slow, but she remembered a golden-eyed face and his quiet teachings and she sought to fight the Cold with the Ocean, with the deep power that was her and within her. A tsunami drew water from the shore and the Cold seemed to still, only for her to hear the sound of movement and then a great shadow was over her._

_Something was moving along the snow, padding like....like an animal._

_The tsunami drew out, the water moving back from the coast, leaving fish flopping in the water, and something loped toward her._

_It was a gigantic thing, larger than most bears, though it seemed like nothing so much as a wolf. Great fangs gleamed in the light of the Moon, patron of Waterbenders, and they reflected the moonlight._

_It was not a wolf, she realized, slowly. it was too big, the eyes shone too brightly, and they began to glow of themselves, a bright green glow to match the ocean. Iridescent foam began to gather around the beast's jaws, water that reflected the fell nature of the people that had left her to die._

_She could feel the gaze, the gaze of the monster loping toward her. It wanted her, it wanted her._

_It was the Cold, now not as a shrieking wind and snow that stung when it began to overwhelm what she so desperately tried to do against it, but as a monster vast and slavering, ready to devour her in a single gulp as Amarok had tried to do with the Moon only to have it fail and the Waterbender strike him with a blast of ice that drove him away._

_He loped toward her and she felt a Will, and it said to her:_

This is not your home, nor your people. Return to us.

_The Cold wanted her, it had not taken her at three, so it wanted her at five._

_She felt herself steeling herself trying to channel the spirit of Papa Ozai, and the monster seemed more roused than ever, and it drew back, jaws opening, and then it howled with an eerie sound that was no mere wolf-howl but seemed to echo with the wailing of a family sundered, and the voices that were fading....._

Himiko awoke with a scream, shivering. She looked around the room. Nothing moved in the shadows. No claws clacking on the floor nor eyes nor fangs that shone by moonlight.

She shivered more. The Cold was only in her dream for the Caldera and the Fire Nation Palace were warm.

Her door opened. It was Lady Ursa, looking at her with a worried expression that filled her with a different warmth to Ozai.

"Himiko, are you all right?"

"Had a nightmare."

"Oh Katara," and there it was. That _other_ name that she heard from Lady Ursa, from Lu Ten, from Uncle Iroh, and in the fading memories.

A name that would come from Ozai's mouth only before he put his hands to her gleaming with fire, and when he told her to tell her mother and her uncle and her grandfather nothing at all. From her brother and sister when it was a secret thing, something that they shared in warmth as something that was theirs, in this sense alone. She was Katara, Zuko was Zuzu, Azula was Zula. It was a name that only gave her hugs from her brother and sister and uncle and Lu Ten, and otherwise for a long time in her life was a name of nightmares, of wolves loping toward her by moonlight, of a towering giant with eyes of gold and a smile of cruelty whose hands were suns to match his eyes, who spoke the name and then fire burned not parts of her but all of her.

For tonight it was the name she accepted as she cried into Ursa's shoulder. Her brother and sister heard that cry and they were awake for a time. They had nightmares too, but had learned not to scream from them. Himiko was still at times the sister-by-choice, and never moreso than this.

Ursa left later, and then Papa Ozai strode in with his right hand gleaming and knelt beside her to whisper "Nightmares are only dreams. Do not give into fear. Do not scream from something that is not real." And then that gleaming hand grasped her wrist and she did not scream, as he whispered into her ear "Good, my Himiko, you are strong." She healed herself with a small circle of water around her wrist and her dreams otherwise were no less unpleasant and she would awaken from them more, but did not scream again. Never again, after that night.

\-----------

Prince Lu Ten came back that afternoon, welcomed by courtiers and then making a formal report to Fire Lord Azulon. Here, Azula and Zuko dragged her in to listen. She did not know in full what to make of Grandfather, at times he was toweringly stern, and yet at others he was the kindest to her of the family. Ursa spent more time with Zuko than with her or Azula, and secretly she wanted more but did not want to make Papa Ozai mad in asking for it. Azulon had welcomed her into the family, had given her a naming ceremony, and where they spoke he spoke kindly to her.

He never called her Katara. She was always Himiko of the Fire Nation, of skin darker than her brother and sister but welcome among their ranks as one of them. He never spoke to her in the fading language.

Lu Ten, and it was that Lu Ten who spoke with pride of victory won in a joint campaign with his father. In another few years of campaigning, she heard him speaking with a surprising reserve given how warm he was to others, he said that Ba Sing Se, the great city, one of the greatest remaining centers of resistance in the Earth Kingdom, would fall.

Then, he said with a wry grin, "There will be no war in Ba Sing Se."

Grandfather laughed and then embraced him, told him "You're looking strong, my boy."

Lu Ten bowed.

"Father will be visiting after me. He wanted me to come by first."

They smiled then, and the children stole away, waiting together in Zuko's room, where Lu Ten arrived with a sack where he brought presents to them.

Both Zuko and Azula received daggers, Zuko bowing formally, if somewhat uneasily. Azula grasped hers with a greedy grin, the kind of strange smile she had when it came to fighting and things that hurt others. For her, he gave her a fan, of bright blue color with white overtones.

He had smiled at her and bent down to ruffle her hair a bit and said in the fading tongue: "This is yours, Katara."

She smiled at him and said in the Fire Nation's tongue: "Thank you, Lu Ten."

And then hugged him tightly.

She was Katara to him, most of the time. Only Himiko in front of Papa and Lady Ursa and Grandfather.

He spoke to her in the fading language and it was from him that she remembered what of it she did, and where her brother and sister learned words in that language.

After the gifts, he took them to play around the lakes, a game that was a moment of genuine and unreserved joy, something fleeting even then, when Ozai Lackland lived in the shadows of a father and a son, and a grandfather.

There was happiness and as long as he was with them, a moment of simple love without any shadows of sorrow around it. The kind that Uncle Iroh gave them, too.

And that Lady Ursa, Himiko knew, tried to give them all. Azula did not know how to deal with it, she saw her sister burst into tears after taking hugs and after refusing them, the same kind of tears. She did not know why she cried in all ways, but she had seen it. Zuko took it much more freely than either of them.

And for her? There were blue eyes and a warm voice that made it hard to accept gold ones, there were elements where Ursa treated her like a child of her own and not, and where she did not, it stung and it meant it was harder to know if when she did she meant it.

So there was Lu Ten and there was all of them, playing a game, playfully casting fireballs near each other, and on her part casting little daggers of ice, the Cold turned for the first time, in that game, into something that she knew at the level where Ozai quietly goaded her sister into tormenting turtleducks and then arranged for Lady Ursa to see it (and that Lady Ursa believed her sister would do this without being told to and punished her was a thing that also made it hard to trust her) would probably see him reward her. Lu Ten even made a game.

She would cast a spear of ice and he would melt it with fire, and Zuko and Azula both laughed.

And within a couple of days, Prince Lu Ten left, in what later histories of the Long War would call the prelude to the Siege of Ba Sing Se, on which a war that would last a century ultimately hinged. It was the campaign for the hinterland of the city, where Earth King Kuei's predecessor, Yong-Lei, waged a brutal conflict that would scour the Earth and saw efforts to hold the city sustained for a time. It would take two and a half years for the Fire Nation to reach the point of being able to bring on the siege. All the children knew was that their favorite cousin would come to see them and would be kind to them and loving, and in that warmth they knew something better than what they lived with as it was.

The next day they received word that Crown Prince Iroh himself was due for a visit to the palace, and they were happy no less.

That night Himiko dreamed of golden eyes and warmth, and Ursa stayed by her side through the times where she'd screamed in nightmares in the past, using a small fire to keep her feeling just warm enough that the Cold did not steal into her dreams. It was one of the few nights that she dreamed good dreams, though when she awoke there was only a small smell of smoke and warmth in her room.....and Azula jumping on her bed to tackle her and saying "Wake up sleepyhead! Uncle Iroh's here!"

She giggled and ran with Azula, the two holding hands.


	4. 'One for the Dark Lord, on his Dark Throne'

_Personal Altar, personal chamber of Prince Ozai:_

Ozai did not say much about his devotions to Agni, the Undying Flame, the Goddess of Justice and purity. After the incident in Xijing, which Azulon had told his sons the full and unadulterated truth thereof in a drunken weeping mess one day, he'd learned much. His brother was too weak to know the truth when he heard it, believing their father was an old man in his cups, that his mind slipped. Ozai was Azulon's son far more than Iroh was and he knew his father. His father, like himself, never truly slipped. There was steel and there was fire in him. Ozai had known from when he was very young that he could not love, nor feel things that others did. Compassion, peace, understanding.

These were obscure things, weaknesses. They made Lu Ten a decadent fop, they made Iroh a stimpleton. Zuko too was ruined by them, but his Azula and his Himiko....one of molten steel and the fires of the Caldera erupting in volcanic fury. Made and reshaped by the hands of a master artisan. One of the frozen snows of the South, water reshaped in the image of fire, and of Agni's rites.

There were many gods and goddesses of the Fire Nation, Himiko, Goddess of the Sun. Zuko the Storm-King. The Darkling Star of whom little was said save that it was a great enemy of the Avatar, a thing of Chaos that lurked at the edges and gnawed itself in its own endless misery.

But of them all, his patron, his spirit, his very being was Agni's.

He lit candles, nine candles.

His father had told him in a drunken weeping mess that the first great rite in the name of Agni done by the Fire Nation had seen Xijing slaughtered, three hundred thousand dead, and six weeks of murder and rape, soldiers burning alive people after they raped them, sometimes after they killed them, howling in demonic fury. They had felt the eyes of the Goddess, and they had unleashed an atrocity so great that none would ever make peace with Azulon as long as he lived. After that he had changed the Agni Kai from an ordeal by fire to a duel to the death, but otherwise seldom mentioned the Queen of Judgment on her Golden Throne, eyes shining with the light of the Sun itself.

Nine candles lit, imagery of Himiko reshaped from a peasant of a stunted and weak culture to a refined daughter of the Fire Nation, a bloodbender like that demented witch in the jail cell. Of Azula, his precious blade, reshaped and honed into a weapon of surpassing destruction, weakness exorcised out of her.

Nine candles lit, and he spoke softly the singsong mantra that drew his vision to the kind of rarefied atmosphere where he could glimpse a small portion of the Spirit World. Only a small one, for spirits seemed to shun him.

It was a rare gift to see his Goddess and yet he did see her, a towering armored being on a Golden Throne, armor of bright crimson, eyes shining like stars, teeth seemingly sharp, hair of brilliant straw-hue, a color that did not exist among humans.

Sunfire eyes lanced into him with heat and fire and he gasped in exultation. His Goddess had blessed him with Her vision, and in that blessing his own eyes seemed to shine for a moment with a mirror of the eyes and Agni seemed to have not two but six eyes, each burning like stars, and her armor seemed to shift color and she grinned, her grin mirrored by his. Fire danced at his fingertips, moving as if it were alive, and there was a low laughter in the room and in its shadows.

For a moment something vast and lit in brilliant light seemed to move in those shadows and they were not shadows.

The fires were stilled when he clenched his fists.

Iroh was here today. His weak, foolish, foppish older brother with that core of things he did not understand. He wept at infants, at kittens. He was nauseatingly prone to coddle and encourage his own weakness in his son and had the misfortune of a wife. Agni's fires burned and the Fire Nation palace was struck by a strange thing that some, the unwise, deemed a hallucination. The impression of monstrous eyes upon the palace, of low laughter that seemed to almost be as two voices echoing. And the strange near-glow in Ozai's eyes, an almost-feral quality in some of his moods.

It would be a bad day for Ozai's moods, and in spite of a lovely day with the turtleducks, his children would burn and he would burn them as he burned.

\-------

Himiko had had a very good day that morning. Uncle Iroh was here, and he had hugged them all and was the kind of person she wished had adopted her many and many a time instead of Papa Ozai. Those feelings curdled in her, and she had learned not to give even a slight hint of them. She could heal, already, even the worst burns and all it left was a dull ache on parts of her body. Papa Ozai had learned this and then he'd burned her _sister,_ the child that she and Zuko both knew he loved. The relish he took in that, of seeing her robes burn with it, of knowing that Azula was too much daddy's little girl to scream.....

That gave them some disquiet and things that were left silent. Azula was quiet around them after and sat away from them around the pond, merely throwing crumbs to the turtleducks but even shying away from them. Azula had not had a good morning that morning, for Ozai had heard her excitement over Uncle Iroh's arrival and she had changed her robes after, the seeming _glow_ in Papa Ozai's eyes something that scared them all. If Ozai's golden eyes seemed to glow like literal molten gold or suns, there were bad things to happen soon.

Zuko had gone to the pond. Azula....she did not know where she was. She was in a good mood all the same. She'd healed Azula, made her back look like normal again with a light pink tinge that would fade with time. The burns had been especially bad this time, she'd winced at the way Azula's _bones_ seemed partially visible, and it had taken more from her than usual to heal it. She shrugged. Zula would be fine, she always was. She, after all, was Ozai's kid of any of them and like their father she had a fire nothing could shake.

She hummed, contentedly, doing a small bit of Waterbending. It was her birthday today, and while Papa Ozai was in that mood where the worst things happened, Mama Ursa was in a mood herself to honor that birthday, a thing that was one of the few times that would give her truly good memories of Ursa even after other things changed. She was content, when she saw a shadow seemed to rise for a moment, her imagination more vivid than otherwise.

There had been thunder in the castle, or laughter, and people were uncertain of which. The kind of things that could have happened in the past when an Avatar was visiting, for in his wake the boundaries of Spirit and Material worlds were weak. The Avatar had vanished almost a century ago, and that was impossible. In the time since he'd vanished, the Gods and Goddesses seemed both more real and more vivid than ever, and yet nothing that laughed like that was welcome.

These were words she heard adults whispering even with a beaming princess of the royal family, for there were fears that adults cannot always hide from children, and it is the lot of children not to grasp them or why they are there, at times.

The shadow that rose turned out to be very familiar again.

"Himiko!"

She stopped. She knew that voice, gravelly and raspy, with an aura of something that she was too young to put words to, then. Fire Lord Azulon looked at her, golden eyes gleaming in the light with a slight shine to them. Not the unhallowed light of her father's eyes. It was one that had she known it more portended disquiet, remembering horrors that had come the last time a particular spirit had been invoked and its powers with it. There was a fire in that gaze as there was one in him. "It's your seventh birthday, today."

That same raspy voice sounded as kind as it was in him to do so. Then his face changed expression slightly, and he leaned down and spoke very deliberately in a tongue that was clearly new to him. "I am glad you're one of us, Himiko."

All but one of the words was in that language that faded. She bowed, a more formal bow like a subject would to a ruler. Azulon laughed, an old man's wheezing in that laugh, at least in part.

"No need to bow to me, child."

Again he spoke in that language, and he slipped his hand on her shoulder.

"Your brother's probably feeding the turtleducks again by the pond. Go keep him company."

As she nodded, the tongue from her dreams strange from Azulon's lips, she smiled and ran off. Azulon turned to see the man in green robes, a small beard extending slightly out from his chin. He was a hulking figure, of stout musculature with a kindly look in his eyes. Azulon was grateful that it was Iroh who was his heir. Ozai, he mused, sometimes seemed like the Curse of Roku, a vengeance for the deeds that had started the war. The murder of Roku, then the Air Nation. Then his own Sacking of Xijing.... Those thoughts in his head were dark and cruel, but the smile on his face was warm and sunny.

"Iroh, my son!" That same warmth was echoed by the hug that was not regal but fatherly. "My grandson's told me all about how the war fares. Come, come, sit. We have things to discuss."

"Things of war and kingdoms, but also of family. Your wife misses you, my son. Be sure to pay her a visit before you leave."

Iroh's smile was broad. "I will be glad to, father." And with that Crown Prince Iroh followed his father not to the throneroom, but to another room with chairs, where Fire Lord and Crown Prince sat as equals.

\------

Iroh had heard the laughter too that morning, it had awakened him. He had thought it thunder and a time when the capital would know the full majesty of a thunderstorm (and those moments brought a shine to Himiko's eyes that showed him Katara was never forgotten, even by Himiko). There had been a steady peal that had gone on and on, and that was when he knew it was not thunder but something _else._

He had asked his father what he knew and the old man's face went pale and he had hastily said "Nothing. My son, it is nothing. We do not need to stir that volcano into being."

And there the topic lay, for that moment, as he began to tell his father in greater detail of plans for the offensive on Ba Sing Se. There were two vast armies of the Earth Kingdom to break before the Siege, led by two of its greatest generals. The Earth Kingdom, like all armies, needed logistical bases and there the Fire Nation had obvious advantages. He was so much less fond of the idea of war's more sadistic elements than his dear brother, but he did not shun from them or their implications. It was war, after all. And if that meant that crop fields burned and supply depots with them, so be it.

It was not a hard heart or one of relish here, but the crisp tone of a professional soldier, curt and straightforward.

He did regret at the time and later the relish at the idea, if necessary, of expanding the harrying of the fields to burning Ba Sing Se itself, but it was not later. Then he was Iroh, Dragon of the West, the most fearsome of the Fire Nation's generals. Its terrible swift sword.

The plans were simply given, and simply accepted. Azulon did not care past a point for the details, for his Dragon of the West had broken the northern Earth Kingdom beyond repair. He was the greatest warrior-prince in the dynasty's history, and unlike his younger son, he did not boast and seem to take active relish in deeds he shunned and remained in the splendor of the palace. He had seen war and war's cruelty and war's randomness. He did not need to be given harsh reminders in cold arguments. He knew.

Azulon mulled, again, the idea of Ozai as a curse on his family. There was that thunderclap that had come from his room and Ozai's enthusiasms for the martial cult and madness of Agni, Goddess of war, of frenzy, and of slaughter.

Overcompensation, perhaps, for being Ozai Lackland, the pampered son of the Palace.

And then he'd asked him of Lu Ten and there was much more warmth and pride. Not merely in the boy's successes as a warrior, for he was splendid there, too. The gifts of the father passed into the sons, as sometimes he wondered and worried that Ozai's sins would pass into his children and what monsters would be raised from the teeth of dragons in the heart of the Fire Nation. Lu Ten understood the hard discipline and nature of war, but he was a person liked and likeable, respected and respectable. To the Earth Kingdom and to the other nations Ozai and Iroh were tainted by his crimes, by the sacking of Xijing (and times his nightmares were still haunted by the smells of burned flesh and the haze of madness receding and seeing what he and his people had done, by sinking into his knees in corpse-ash and staring with open mouth and pale face and mute horror). Lu Ten was hope.

Lu Ten was a way out.

Hearing stories of his compassion, knowing that it was no persona, but himself (for Lu Ten's persona, insofar as he had one, was more of a hardened warrior with a stern edge. That too was a relief)....Iroh, he too was his son. He had taught his grandson these virtues and he and his wife lived a good life together. Not like Ozai and Ursa.

It was a long chat, too, three hours. One of warmth hand two lords of fire and smoke meeting together as father and son, relishing each other's company and a good time.

\-------

At the turtleduck pond Zuko was indeed feeding the turtleducks, and so was Azula, who was sitting well away from both of them, at the very leftmost corner of the pond.

Himiko frowned. Why was she doing that again? Father did not burn them all like that every day or close to it, but it was not that infrequent.

She ran over to see her, forming a snowball to throw it at her and then it struck Azula in the face, much harder than she intended.

It was that day that Azula's fire changed to blue and she raised herself to her feet, snarling with a feral note not unlike that of Ozai.

"Leave me alone!" She screamed the words loud enough that the turtleducks flapped and Zuko was startled out of his tranquil mood, his eyes bugging out.

"What?" was his only response as Azula stormed out, blue fire sparking at her fingertips.

Himiko stared at her in bemusement, lips pressed firmly together.

She scuffed the ground in disappointment and returned to feed the turtleducks by Zuko. 

\------

Ursa saw Azula then, and the blue light of her fires, and there was a sudden fear that grew in her then. Few among the Fire Nation commanded firebending of that color, and even few Avatars had grasped it. That was not the only thing that disturbed her, her daughter was furious, fearful, hurt. There were a thousand emotions in a face that was usually tranquil or prone to a sudden and even murderous rage.

"Azula," she called.

A single word, spoken with as much warmth and love as her voice could muster.

She did not see Ozai slipping his head out or the ways his eyes widened at the blue flames, nor the ugly nature of the smile that began to cross his face. He quietly shut the door, unconcerned about Azula facing Ursa's weakness. Ursa might try to infect his daughter with what made her the weak and infantile being she was but Azula was strong. She was like him.

The fires guttered out and Azula looked at her, things at the tip of her tongue that she wished to say and could not. Her eyes flicked to where Ozai's room was and she suddenly had an awful vision of telling him the truth and then Ozai burning her mother the way she was burned. And Himiko, her sister, serving her role of hiding that, too.

The image meant that one of the emotions won out over the others and she fell to her knees, holding herself. Crying. In later years she would regret nothing so much as falling to her knees crying in front of a mother who knew that she was a monster, Ozai's darling creature.

For then there was only Ursa reaching out to hold her, knowing nothing of what happened, and a singular moment of tenderness and warmth to weigh against the growing elements of Azula's self-hatred. Even at eight, Azula knew the burden of her father's love and what passed for his idea of kindness, and vowed quietly that she would try to shield even Himiko and her treacherous healing from that, lest her father's eyes shine with more than the reflected....something...that had lit them with the fires of Yaoma's domain.

The burdens fell away and she was a girl in her mother's arms, weeping, vulnerable. And eventually fell asleep.

Sound asleep enough that she missed Ozai coming from the room, and fortunately the way his expression hardened behind Azula's back at his daughter's red face, the tears streaking it. At the way Ursa rewarded such things. She missed too the low hiss of his breath and the sneer of his lip before Ozai replaced it with a mask of tranquility and concern.

"I was at prayer for most of the morning. What happened?"

"I don't know, Ozai. She just....she started crying and let me hold her until she slept."

Ozai's smile was an unnatural thing, an attempt to emulate things that were natural to other people. Most times he regretted that he could not feel it because it would have made for a better mask. Here, for one of a few moments in his life, he saw that Azula had a peace he never saw in her, something that seemed more real than what he could do. There were things that clawed at him in manners that were never real, only dying embers leaving ghosts upon the floor.

For the only moment in his life to any of his children, Ozai's hands emulated the gestures that Ursa made, the slow and tender motions that kept Azula quiet. It was strange. Pathetic. Weakness. He did not understand the point and so it was a thing that never happened again.

\-------

Katara enjoyed a good birthday and she _was_ Katara to everyone today. Even Azula, face still a bit red from earlier, was kind to her then, as kind as she got. A bit brawling and boisterous but that was just her sister being herself. Lu Ten was not there but everyone else was, and it was one of her happiest memories, the rare day when even the Fire Lord called her by the name of a language that she barely remembered, and when her robes were _blue._ This too was a thing of hours, of games, laughter. Family being family. It was here that she met Mai, and Ty Lee, both of whom were newly admitted to a place that she, along with Princess Azula, would enter only after today.

The Fire Nation Royal Academy for Girls, a place that under Azulon with the avid encouragement of Ozai had changed what it expected of noblewomen. Now they too were taught to fight and to know the more martial endeavors.

Himiko's gift of the uniform of the place from Papa Ozai was one of the memories with him that time and understanding did not diminish, for whatever his many, many vices, Ozai did not judge women as inferiors to men, and he encouraged his daughters in ways that lesser men would not. There was a pride in that smile, a genuine one, and it was one of many gifts.

New fans, a dagger that Azula, to her surprise, had given her with a blue hilt and symbolism in her native language (though she did not recognize it, then, and would only learn its meaning much later in life). Zuko gave her a book, which she smiled at and accepted gracefully. It was the first of the Ember Island romances, one of the things that she, Azula, and Zuko shared even in their most strained years.

There was joy and there was peace. It was a good day for the family of Ozai.

\------

Azula did not scream that night when Ozai stepped into her room, ordering Himiko with curt phrases to follow.

She awoke then to flames near her face.

"You cried, Azula. In front of Ursa. What have I told you not to do?"

Azula said nothing, even when the flames descended on her right wrist, even when her feeling in that part of her body vanished. She just stared into space, as Ozai leaned down on top of her in a manner that would have horrified others who witnessed it. There was a smell of ashes in his breath as he whispered into her ear: "Good girl. You even gave Himiko an extra birthday present in being able to heal you twice."

Indeed, her wrist had feeling and she wanted to scream at the pain but did not. Instead the pain soothed and there was a taughtness and an aching heat that would fade (and she wore long sleeves the next day without ever telling anyone why).

Himiko's expression was confused when she gave her a very bitter "Thank you for healing me" and then turned over in her bed, staring at her eyelids. She got no further sleep that night, and Himiko for her own part slept soundly, convinced her brother and sister knew she was only trying to help them.

She could heal, after all, and she needed healing for herself, too. Not much today, but they knew what it was to burn and to be burned.

It was a good day, and nothing unusual for the family of Ozai.

\--------

The next morning Ursa and Iroh had a quiet talk about the strange events of yesterday and Iroh frowned, then, but said with regret that he would not be able to help the children, then, if he stirred up Ozai's wrath and then returned to the front and left them in the lurch. Hearing Iroh come to a conclusion she had started to draw but had been unwilling to speak so easily jolted Ursa more than she wished to admit. She clenched her fists, understanding the hard logic and emotional realism in what he said, knowing that if such a confrontation came, it would have be one decided totally against her husband.

That thought rocked her again in turn. Years, now. Mother of three children, and it had taken her this time to begin to think like the very nobles she'd once despised.

The despair in her at that moment dampened her fires and it was with a spirit of ashes that she nodded and accepted Iroh's conclusions once more.

The next day she began to compose a letter to him, the first of many that Iroh would receive, as he departed once more for the front.


	5. "And I looked and I beheld a red horse and its rider"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The great and the powerful spend days on the job, as a prince returns from the battlefield to request reinforcements, and another prince begins to lay the groundwork for a great scheme.

_The Chambers of Ursa, Queen of the Fire Nation, two months from Crown Prince Iroh's visit:_

"I don't understand, still, why Ozai Lackland of all people allows us to do this," sighed Ikem. Their room smelled of the pleasures they had taken together, and Ursa lay reclined against him, her eyes closed and her chin resting on his chest. 

"If he wanted a pretext to have either of us killed, we've just given him that."

Ursa laughed, bitterly.

"Ozai no more relishes what his father has made us do than I do. He's a good man, Ikem. Deep down. I know he is. He loves, and he can love. He didn't want to be part of that breeding experiment any more than I did."

Ikem sniffed.

"I don't understand a man who doesn't care what his wife does in her free time."

There Ursa's laugh had a more bitter and sadder undertone. "Nobles aren't like us. They do not expect their wives to be faithful, nor do the wives expect the men to be. Even if they were, with the way the FIre Lord snared us all here, I suspect Ozai would have set that trend anyway. We have given him, and his family, a son. That is all we were expected to do."

Ikem raised an eyebrow.

"So she is...."

Ursa put her hand on his mouth.

"Not here. Even with a husband as zealously beholden to his class's virtues and vices as Ozai, the walls have ears. Do not say what you were going to say."

Ikem kissed her palm and moved her hand down.

"Shouldn't she be told, at least?"

Ursa's lips became thin, then she shook her head. 

"She's a child, Ikem. And the walls have ears. If she was told, she would tell someone else, and then the Fire Lord might find out."

Both of them went pale at the thought.

"My children are and were meant to be weapons, Ikem. Ozai's blades for his father's use. Swords of fire to scourge a world and force it to obey if it will not accept peace on our terms, in our time."

She sighed. "If she finds out what you want to tell her, she's a kid. She wouldn't take it well, she'd tell another, and then..." She held Ikem and wept for a moment, as he stroked her hair gently.

"I can't lose my children, Ikem. There is nothing in this world that could ever make me do this."

He brushed her hair soothingly and let her cry, then took her hand and kissed it again.

"I believe you. I just wish...."

She nodded. "Azulon is old, and he's not getting healthier as he gets older. When....when Crown Prince Iroh is Fire Lord, we'll talk to him and see."

She did not see his smile, then, though any who had seen it would have recognized a familiarity with another grin that would have led them to do a double-take.

\------

_Chambers of Prince Ozai:_

Ozai sat before his altar, reading a letter written to him by candlelight, his face marked with a single upturn of his right lip. Excellent. General Mongke would be in, soon enough. And still better, he'd found the Witch and where she was held. 

With a careful look around him, Ozai took paper and began to carefully write his response, knowing that it would be the start of something that might not bear fruit for years but his Lady Agni would bless him and guide him.

And in the event, even his father could not begrudge him a client, nor a willingness to become involved in the business of the Fire Nation.

\-------

_Royal Office of Fire Lord Azulon:_

Azulon rubbed his back and then his knuckles with a sour grumble. If he had had any idea just how much work it would take to be the autocratic overlord of the second-largest nation in the world by land area and a near-match to the Earth Kingdom in population counting the mainland and narrowly over it counting the colonies, he would never have built on his father's works. His father, as with his grandfather, had carefully broken the power of the nobility, and the ability of the Fire Sages to serve as a second counterweight. The tripod, the old system of the original Fire Nation, was an inherently unstable situation anyway. 

He looked up and smiled at one of his own posters.

"One People, One Nation, One Lord!"

His old slogan, one that had underscored his commitment to expanding his father's war from a war for the western edges of the Earth Kingdom to one for the entire world.

His eyes glazed over as he looked at yet another memorandum on a seemingly trivial matter.

So many of his ministers were incapable and unwilling to decide for themselves, and they expected him to do what they should not need orders to do. So much of his daily business even in the midst of the largest war the world had ever seen was mere mundane business of government. Approve this amount of funds for this town. Light a fire under the ass of some random bureaucrat who was hoarding food and wealth and who wasn't smart enough to hide this, Approve the summary execution of an embezzler who got caught to encourage the rest. 

Break the deadlock of two powerful nobles in the mainland who were in the midst of a petty bureaucratic feud. On general principles he was quite happy to have nobles feuding and focused on their hatreds of each other over any focus on him, because that made the task of autocracy self-sustaining. Not, however, when it came to something like this. Not when it came to the point that both were feuding over fields and expecting the rest of the Fire Nation to care whose umpty-great whatever had controlled what.

He felt a great temptation to leave his palace, to march to these fields, and to burn them all to solve the situation that way.

Not without regret he simply noted a few elements on these forms and drew new ones to fill out to start the process of adjudicating the dispute. Since the Fire Lords had displaced their older checks, these disputes had grown in scale and in danger for the Fire Nation and its people. The nobility were broken into service to the Royal Family, and it seemed that a price for that was that as they were servile to the royals, so had they become monstrous to those below. There was a lesson there in front of his face but Azulon refused to see it.

Paperwork upon paperwork upon paperwork. Trivialities and grater issues. Letters that went 'The Royal Family of the Fire Nation deeply regrets to inform you' (and perhaps Sozin had regretted it. Perhaps Lu Ten and even Iroh did. Iroh's wife Hino certainly did, she made it plain to him at times that she believed the war had escaped their control and become something terrifying and destructive). Promotions for those who had fought well, confirming the permanent rank of formerly Colonel Mongke of the Rough Rhinos to Brigadier General.

Mongke was even coming here to the Fire Nation to confer with his patron, his dear younger son.

As his attention glazed over again in an arcane discussion of the merits of a potential redistricting of colonial districts that were designed in Sozin's day and the arcane elements of the feud, his mind wandered again.

He had been blessed with two sons, both mighty Firebenders. Iroh, Dragon of the West. Hino, a noble of the greatest colonial city, and their son Lu Ten, whose Firebending was in its own category of exceptional power. In Iroh he had a successor more than worthy of his name, a commander of great armies who'd spent his career successfully outmaneuvering and defeating the seemingly messianic Lord of Heavenly Peace, and then encouraging his son to rise and to make his own name.

And then there was Ozai Lackland. In the past, even under his own father, Sozin, Fire Lords who had more than one child encouraged their children to take responsibility. Relationships between heir, and spare(s) were never easy things, nor guaranteed to be, If Ozai were different than he would have. Ozai, in his own view confirmed by statements and the views of his Eyes and Ears, was not worth the responsibility entrusted to him. His relationship with Ursa was supposedly highly enthusiastic in its sexuality (certainly Ursa had been heard making, at times, very enthusiastic sounds) but they had had only two biological children.

He had begun to entrust Ozai with responsibility when he had tracked down the granddaughter of Roku and ordered Ozai to breed with her. An experiment. A means to create his swords of fire to scourge the world if it would not yield to peace by any other means.

"My son," he had told Ozai when his younger son had raged at him over what he'd termed "Being bred like a Komodo Rhino stallion to a mare"-"You are being entrusted with your first responsibility. If you cannot govern a household or provide me with six to eight blades, then why should you be trusted to govern a kingdom?"

Ozai had snarled at him then: "How can I govern a household if I have no say in my own wife? Why would she welcome being with me if she knows the only reason it is so is to whelp weapons for you?"

Azulon had shrugged then, remarkably detached.

"That's why this is a test, my son. Eight blades of Roku. That is your expectation. Do not disappoint me," and then Ozai's glare was one that was almost murderous. He dismissed it by turning his back on his son.

Azulon's thoughts wandered further.

He had demanded eight blades and he had three, one of whom wasn't even a Firebender.

The Water Tribe tongue, to be fair, was a lovely language in itself. Learning it had been a pleasure. It broadened his horizons (the thought giving him a wry grin).

Then, as he finished off that paper he found one actually connected to dear Himiko.

Ozai had written it showing that the encouragement of her as a weapon was actually working, and working very well indeed. That gave him pause.

He had demanded eight and had three, but Ozai had given him room for thought for a change. Out of all the people in their family, Ozai Lackland, Ozai Flintheart, the least likeable figure in their family's long history, even counting Azulon himself, had given him an idea that had been there and been mooted but now....

Azulon looked at the paper again and then let his lips part, teeth bared, in something that others would have mistaken for a grin.

\-------

_Chambers of Ursa:_

Ikem had slipped out and slipped back into his routine of hiding as one of the Palace cooks before Ozai dared step into his wife's chambers. He waved his hand in front of his nose slightly and he looked at her. 

"Enjoyed your night?"

Ursa nodded, still slightly wary of everything.

Ozai gave her a grimace that was his attempt at a smile.

"Still wary of my wrath even when you have no reason to be. My father wanted us to have.....eight children." He shuddered. "You and I, stuck in this...."

Ursa watched as he shivered again.

"We have our son, and our daughter." His eyes twinkled slightly at that last phrase and his grimace became the uglier thing that was his true smile.

"And Himiko. Himiko means more than we had reason to expect, but..."

He shrugged.

"You and I are not together because we want to be. I have always acknowledged that fact and even if my father wished you sundered from your _first_ husband, I see no reason to obligate his wishes. Not here, not on this."

Ursa nodded, cautiously still.

Ozai laughed, then, fire dancing at the edge of two of his fingers before he flicked them and the fire winked out.

"You have someone who knows how to reach your heart, Ursa. I am not the monster my father was, even if I might seem that way."

A knock at the door and both of them froze.

"Prince Ozai," a low voice rumbled, one of the archers who were the royal bodyguard. 

"Yes, Oda?"

"Your father wants to see you."

"I will go to him."

He waited for the footsteps to leave and then sniffed again.

"Light candles, Ursa. They would know we did not sleep together last night and if this room smells of that..." 

Ursa nodded then, and with a wave of her hand, she did so.

Ozai smiled then, and reached out to cup her cheek, and she did not mind _these_ touches.

"When my brother becomes Fire Lord, I will see if I can release you to be with your first husband. It was never just that we be here."

She nodded, then, hating the hope that flowered in both their eyes at the thought and she thought he did, too.

\------

_Audience Chamber of Fire Lord Azulon:_

Azulon sat on his red Phoenix Throne, his fingers steepled. It had been no great challenge to get into his more formal robes and when it came to this son of his, it was a necessity. Ozai, like all curs, had a tendency to growl and snarl and to bare his fangs, to challenge those who were foolish enough to let this be. 

The prince stepped in then, and bowed, even if his eyes seemed still darkened with hatred and revulsion.

Azulon's voice was frigid. 

"Son."

Ozai's voice matched it with coldness. "Father."

"You have surprised me, my son. You and your children."

For a moment Ozai stiffened and there was even a hint of fear that Azulon dismissed with a curt inward laugh.

"Your Waterbender, that Himiko...."

Ozai seemed to relax, then, and Azulon again dismissed the strange emotions in his younger son.

"You have shown that a Waterbender can be trained by our methods and that she has very great potential indeed."

Ozai was definitely relaxed, now.

"I want you to ensure that Princess Himiko and I spend more time together, son."

And at that Ozai's motions did shift and shifted much more broadly.

"Father, I don't...."

Azulon raised his hand and wagged his finger.

"Son, I don't ask you to understand, I ask you to obey." 

Smiling at the rage boiling in Ozai, he then deigned to explain.

"Himiko shows that even the least promising material can be reshaped into a weapon. In that, my son, you have indeed made me proud of you. To take a child from a barbarous nation of savages that roll around in the snow and eat the animals they prize as lovers and reshape her into a princess worthy of our heritage? It is a feat that none could have imagined before you. In truth, between her and the Princess Azula, I am coming to see that you are right. Women of royal families should do more than remain in the home and ensuring there are heirs."

"Send her to me, son, and I will begin to hone her as a weapon myself."

Ozai bowed then, his motions stiff.

"As you will it, Fire Lord."

And with that he stalked off with the dignity of an affronted cat.

\-------

_Chambers of Ursa:_

Ozai stepped in with a calmness in his motions and his mannerism and closed the door very gently. 

Ursa went pale and stiff, frightened lest the dragon in front of her turn and seek to burn her to ashes.

"That bastard," growled Ozai, in a voice low and rumbling. "He wants to hone Himiko as a weapon."

Ursa raised an eyebrow. "Forgive me, my husband, but is that not what you have done?" 

Ozai nodded. "It is, but I treat my daughters as people who can become weapons. He would not. He will not."

"Don't tell me after all this time you actually care for Himiko."

Ozai's glare at her for a moment made her genuinely afraid.

"Just because we are in a marriage that will last until my father's corpse is cold does not mean you should not know me well. Our children can remake the world, Ursa. Of course I care for them to do so the right way, in the right hands. _My_ hands."

He gazed more clearly at Ursa, then, and then leaned in.

"Tell me, do you know what happened with the Rape of Xijing?"

Out of every question Ursa would have expected, that was not one.

"I know there was a great battle there and one of the greatest victories of our wars."

Ozai shook his head. "That's the narrative my father told. If you want to know why I am angry at the thought of him shaping Himiko himself, let me tell you the truth."

With that he gestured for Ursa to sit down and he told her the most horrific thing she'd ever heard in her life, as her face went white. 

\-------

_Audience Chamber of Fire Lord Azulon:_

Prince Lu Ten had surprised him by sending him a message that had arrived not long before he did. 

Azulon sat on his throne, willing his face to an imperceptible stillness.

Lu Ten strode in with the confidence of a soldier, and with a soldier's vigilance.

When he spoke, Azulon listened to his requests for reinforcements and for why, and then as he listened more thoroughly, he willingly went from his throne to the war room where the Fire Nation charted its wars. Before the collective talents of the strategists of his high command, Lu Ten laid out the plan and what he would do with these 30,000 troops, and how he intended to supply them.

"That is....an ambitious plan, my grandson," Azulon granted, his eyes still following along the lines that Lu Ten had drawn.

"Tell me, and tell me the truth. How much of this plan is yours?"

Lu Ten smiled warmly. "It is mostly father's, I grant you. I've spent more time in the field than planning campaigns."

Azulon smiled warmly. "That you spoke that truth is why you will make a great Fire Lord. Lesser men would have claimed improbabilities in front of me,"

Azulon cracked his knuckles.

"I've had them manning the coast defense batteries of the Austral climates for less."

Lu Ten nodded, then, slightly afraid. Azulon let his colder and crueler smile show. Good. His grandon and son waged wars, but in the battlefield they too were those who implemented his designs. They were afraid? Let them be, for fear was its own motivator.

From there his day became something more boring, returning to the long hours at desk-work.

He looked at an old portrait of Llah, his wife.

Her death had come not long after the fall of Xijing when he'd told her the truth and she'd dared to wound him that way. He had never forgiven her for it, but at times when he looked at that portrait and he continued to sift through the long hours of 'yes' and 'no' and drawing new forms to expand on a 'maybe' and turning into a set of 'nos' and a few 'yeses' he wondered if his heart had died then.

He shrugged. Most of his days were like this. Long hours at a desk, occasional times with his sons.

Soon, he reflected with a cold grin, he would have Himiko working with him to hone Ozai's Ocean-concept.

A weapon who could show not merely the superiority of his people and their culture, that which made the Fire Nation the master-race meant to be rulers and the others ruled. It would be a fascinating exercise.

\------

_Turtleduck Pond:_

Lu Ten saw Zuko indulging in his favorite past-time and smiled to see his cousin. 

"Zuko," he nodded, and Zuko stood up and shouted "Lu Ten, you're here!"

He was content to hug Zuko, who seemed to be a bit in need of something like simple warmth from another to a point that it was fortunate Zuko did not look up to see the way Lu Ten's face tightened, nor the way he looked around.

For a moment, he let himself sit beside Zuko and talk to him about things.

"Where are your sisters?" He asked, finally, after their talk had reached a natural stopping point (meaning Zuko's excited blend of words and sometimes hyper-paced babble had finally been wrung dry).

Zuko frowned.

"Probably at the sparring range." 

Lu Ten saw the frown and looked more closely.

"They've been here with you before."

Zuko nodded again.

"Zula was, for a bit. This morning. Didn't even throw the bread at the turtleducks."

Lu Ten raised an eyebrow. "Didn't what?"

"She does that, sometimes. When Father watches."

Lu Ten blinked. "That's....odd. Does she do it any other time?"

Zuko shook his head. "No, and I've noticed that she tries to toss it away from them now. Himiko...doesn't come by here as much."

He sighed. "Something happened on her birthday between them and they don't get along the way they did."

Lu Ten stared, slightly, though Zuko looked at the ground.

"Himi hit Zula in the face with a snowball and Zula....got angry. They haven't played around like they used to. It's.....it's sparring, now."

That did worry him more.

Rather than letting himself show it, Lu Ten sat and talked more with Zuko, telling him some of the funnier stories about military service, for there were always those.

Those that made him wake up screaming in the night, well...he did not need those. No child deserved that kind of knowledge.

\------

After an hour's lapse, he did find his way to the sparring range and he stared, blankly, at what he saw.

Himiko stood with tendrils of waters around her, and a kind of grin on her face that made him somewhat uneasy. For her part Azula seemed detached and he noticed _her fires were blue._

"Give it up, Zula. You can't beat me."

Azula said nothing. There was a smell of ozone in the air and that in turn startled him. _Lightning? At the age of eight? What in the name of Yaom-_ and then there was a flash of light and Himiko jumped away from it and transformed one of the tendrils into a long icicle with the blunt edge facing Azula, and he winced at the sound of it cracking her in the face and knocking her down.

The smell of ozone lingered and then came _thunder._

Azula was bleeding where the icicle had collided with her face, the cut not a deep one but a real one. Himiko saw it and she seemed to pale, almost, and there was a sense of guilt. What had been a sparring match changed then as she took her pouch and went to Azula, telling her "Zula. Let m-" 

Azula glared at her.

"No. Don't want to be healed by you again."

"Zula, you know how father is about scars."

Lu Ten's eyes went very wide at that and he tried to make himself inconspicuous when Azula's resistance seemed to fold then. Himiko, at the age of eight, was far too comfortable with blood and the sight of blood, and with healing the wound to leave no scars.

He coughed afterward and he went to talk to them. Azula was....he wasn't sure what had changed with her. She seemed brash, more confident, boasting in what she could do with her firebending as if bending was all there was to life. Himiko was quieter, taciturn. She listened much and said little. He'd tried to ask both Himiko and Azula about the 'Father and scars" statement but both simply went stone-faced and said nothing to him.

He found himself disturbed the more he realized that Azula had gained tremendous power and skill in Firebending, more than anyone else in his family, or in truth that he'd heard of outside an Avatar. Blue Fire, lightning at the age of eight.

He had only grasped lightning when he was fifteen and that after careful training from his father.

She had knowledge, skill, power beyond anything he'd seen and yet she seemed morbidly obsessed with making it better.

Himiko......

They all froze when they heard a voice cough. One of the archers, again.

"Princess Himiko," he spoke to her in the same tone he'd spoken to her father earlier in the day.

She nodded, calmly. "Fire Lord Azulon wishes to speak to you."

With that same calmness Himiko left, and Lu Ten tried to talk to Azula and found that where the topic wasn't bending she was hesitant, or silent, and kept looking at her right wrist.

With a sense of foreboding and sadness he would return to the front, giving his father statements that seemed to see Crown Prince Iroh frown, as he set his quill to paper and slowly wrote the characters of the Fire Nation's language, not telling Lu Ten who the letter was for.

\-------

Ursa looked at an older letter with her own eyes quiet, as Ozai had let in General Mongke. It was seldom that they were together as a couple, but the news about Himiko seemed to rattle Ozai and he made the point here.

She did not care about Ozai's words with the general, then. Only in later years would she regret the casual attention paid.

Her eyes were focused on Iroh's words.

_I believe that my brother Ozai has taken the idea that his children are our father's blades too far. He wants to make Father happy beyond all other things, because he thinks it will give his life, and himself meaning. Our father wanted your children as weapons, so he treats them as weapons, and he cannot give them the goodness that is there. I do not like thinking about my father and my brother in these terms, but it is a necessity. Our family has done dreadful things, in the past. Things we called necessity. If Father could see three hundred thousand citizens of the Earth Kingdom butchered, I could easily believe my brother's actions the results of seeking to keep that far from him, even if others suffer. If my brother were to think of the throne as is, I cannot see anything he would not do._

_Which is the truth, i do not know, but I would ask you to be cautious. One of them is not what he seems, perhaps both of them. There is a sickness in Ozai, and it is a dangerous one. A sickness, at best, of desire for a throne. I hope it is only that, for there are plenty in a situation as his who could be poisoned thus and who would do things dark and terrible to take and hold power._

She wrote the words of her own letter in response, making a point to keep a straight face and to focus on making her characters perfect. There, if in few other things, her second husband's influence would rub off on her for the better. 

_Iroh, I hear your words that Ozai is hurting the children. He is your brother, and I know more than most that there is a sickness in him. He cannot love, nor does his heart work as other people do. It's not that he cannot, but.... Ozai hurting my children is one thing, I am certain that he is. I keep trying to get them to tell me but they won't **say** anything. Iroh, what can we do? If this sickness is as bad as you say it is, our family could...._ She looked at the excerpt of Iroh's letter, as she finished writing the last sentence, not willing to look quite at the paper beyond what it took to do the characters fully. _"Lu Ten has leave from the front. He knows, or suspects he knows, more. We shall have to be careful. Ozai is....sensitive. If he suspects this, he may think of it as a threat to his status. There is good in my brother, I know. If we can show him that these actions of his are a threat to his own heart, then maybe we can save him. No-one is truly foul in that way."_

Ursa grit her teeth, then, and folded the letter to place it in the envelope. She had seen her daughter, her strong, willful, violent daughter break down and cry in her arms like she was much younger. Nothing good could make that happen, and the way her son reacted, and Himiko.... She overheard a brief statement from Ozai that would reap a long harvest in years to come, but then she had heard it and dismissed it.

"Thank you General Mongke. It is good to know where the bloodbender's current cell is. Find a way to move her."

Ozai so seldom spoke of his work where she could hear it, but he seemed exhausted, and with something of the feralness in him from that night months ago when the thunder had sounded as laughter. That exhaustion gave her some hope. Iroh was right, he had to be right. Azulon had married her to Ozai not simply as some strange breeding experiment, but because he had a heart, and she could find it. A look of determination on her face, she gave her husband a kiss on the cheek and stepped out with the envelope.

General Mongke acknowledged her more than Ozai did, and he bowed before her as a princess. She simply smiled at him in turn, though he spoke much more softly than her husband, with words that even then brought history and the cycles of fate to a turn that only one could foresee all the corners of, and even he partially.


	6. "For the great masses of people will sooner believe a big lie than a small one, for they will often tell little lies but will be ashamed to tell a big one."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Azulon begins to instruct Himiko on means to improve her Waterbending. 
> 
> Lu Ten defeats an intended ambush of his supply lines. 
> 
> His mother, Hino, receives an invitation from the one person in the entire Fire Nation she'd expected to get it from least.

_Chambers of Ozai and Ursa:_

When the news came that Azulon had summoned Himiko to his side, Ursa saw that same behavior with Ozai that left her most worried and afraid from him. He was calm, supremely so, and his words were carefully modulated, each syllable precisely enunciated in an unconscious parody of a refined royal Fire Nation accent. 

This day she did not understand it, not then, but later, when she went with him, she began to understand all too well.

\-----

_Fire Nation training ground._

This was a space within the palace grounds, but a relatively desolate place. the Earth looked tormented here, blackened and bubbled and marked with the elements of power and destruction (and in years to come she would encounter Earth Nation training grounds that were no different, and even those of Waterbenders were only partially so).

She was here, with of all people, Fire Lord Azulon. Her grandfather. A grandfather who spoke to her seldom and had only recently begun to speak to her in that language she didn't really remember. The language of the Water Tribes. Of the Cold. She shivered, then, for the memory of the Cold crept into her bones for a moment.

Azulon neither noticed nor cared, as he moved his hands outward, and focused on getting himself into the true clarity required to shoot lighting. This would be his first demonstration and he was quite certain Himiko had never seen this. Zuko was a disappointment in terms of his firebending, almost enough to make him question if the idea of breeding Roku's granddaughter to his lineage was a good idea. It would be a good lesson too, to his youngest granddaughter. She was almost like one of the masters of the world, and this would be a test to see if his son's idea could work, and could be taken further.

"Now, Himiko, let me show you the first of these lessons I intend to teach you. Have you seen lightning called by Firebenders?"

Himiko looked at her grandfather curiously for a moment, blinking as she bit her lip.

_"_ Azula can shoot lightning."

Azulon about fell over from shock at the simple statement, realizing that it was no mere exaggeration. Azula was eight, and she was shooting LIGHTNING? He would have to ensure his son would lie with Roku's granddaughter again. The elder child was a disappointment, a soft sword, but the younger one.... He blinked and shook his head.

"You've seen a maiden do it, my lady. Now behold what happens when the most powerful Firebender in the world calls the lightning."

Himiko had seen Zula call the lightning a few times. Sometimes she could fire it from her hands, but often she seemed to summon it quite literally from the skies themselves. Zuko had been nam _e_ d after the storm god but it was his sister who seemed to embody that kind of power that she had only seen when they sparred. The smell of ozone was in the air again, though the name was not known to the benders of Azulon's time _,_ nor indeed those of Ozai. It was there when Zula did it, but here it was intense enough she nearly choked on it. Her hair stood on end, not just on her head but on her arms, as she felt her breathing seemingly drawn out of her lungs. Lighting erupted from Azulon's fingers, not merely one of them, not a single bolt as Zula summoned, but ten bolts, o _n_ e from each finger. Azulon smiled, and she saw for one of the few times in her life the kind of smile that in later years would make her fully believe the stories she was told about the truth of Xijing. It was the tiger's smile as it crept upon its prey. The training ground shattered her gasp of awe and indeed terror making the carnivous grin of Azulon intensify.

_"_ That is what Firebending can do in the hands of its truest and greatest masters, Himiko. Now what I want to ask you is but three questions, as your first lesson. First, tell me. Do you know what the terms barbarian and savage mean? _"_

Himiko shook her head. Azulon's tiger-smile intensified. 

"In the beginning it meant simply "Man or woman of another kingdom." There were names in the old days for the barbarians of the east, of the north, and of the south. None to the west, for we are the most west. We are the Land of the Sun. Savage, however, is a word that has only ever been a marker of our superiority, and it is right that it should be so.

We, Himiko, have developed a means to break man's dependence on the soil and on lords who can exact from peasants to eternity. We have built factories, machines that go across the ocean, and in the air. Those foolish would-be conquerors in the Air Nation might have deemed themselves Airbenders, but we are the _masters of the air._ By our will we have eyes in the sky next to which nothing of our foes can hide. Our ships of metal traverse the ocean. Waterbenders, like the tribes that left you to die in the cold because they did not want you, deem themselves to understand water. We do not care to understand the water, for we are its masters. We have gained understanding of tides and of the impact of the moon and its rotations on the tides.

We have built weapons of war, Himiko, that discovered the explosive powder that can do more damage to the landscape than Firebender or Earthbender alike.

When we of the Fire Nation speak of ourselves as civilized, Katara of the Water Tribe, it is because we have mastered the world, and because against the feats of our arms, nothing can stand against us directly. We are lords of power and of might, and we define the terms of both for the world."

He looked at her curiously.

"You were born of that Water Tribe, I should say, Katara. But are you of a people who left you to die in the cold, or those who brought you to the warm hearth?"

Himiko looked at him. "I am Himiko, of the Fire Nation. Katara.....I don't know why people keep calling me by that name. I hear it in dreams, sometimes, but it's a name of dreams. Not who I am, or who I want to be."

Azulon's smile was tiger-ish. 

"Good, you understand the nature of civilization, then. One masters the elements, another leaves infants to die in the snow because they are unworthy of what it deems as greatness.

The people unworthy of you do have one thing going for them, Himiko."

She cocked her head.

"The Water Tribe language is a subtle thing of long words that can say as much in a single word as we can in two sentences. Their tongue does not have tones, either. I believe because its people dwell in endless flat snows that there was a need to turn that intellect that all mankind shares to the mind, for there was nothing else to do there that can be spoken of to a girl your age."

Then he leaned down beside her.

"I have shown you what it is that I can do."

He handed her a pouch, a wineskin of a very old style filled with water.

"Now show me the greatest thing that you can do, of the kind you would do in a sparring match."

Katara nodded and then the entire amount of water in the wineskin slid out, and she formed it into a set of jagged icicles, each a blade to match the products of any foundry or any forge of Fire Nation manufacture.

Given his hopes and his metaphors for the heirs of Roku, the irony was not lost on him that he saw sixty blades, each capable of puncturing a man in full armor if hurled with sufficient speed and force. When she moved a finger to a point that only his experience did show him the icicles moved with a speed of terrifying scale.

Azulon's smile became more carnivorous still.

"Good. Between this and healing you shall become capable of great feats."

Then he gestured her to sit.

"Now, Himiko, let me tell you a very important story. This is of the person who before you we deemed to be the most powerful known Waterbender. Her birth name in that barbarian tongue was Hama, but we call her the Witch. She discovered a power that we have deciphered the basis of, though it has no known counter. It works, under her, in the light of the full moon but I believe you, Himiko, can and will learn to wield it even in daylight.

That power is called bloodbending and it works...."

As she sat, she listened, and what began as a seeming blend of story time and of her experimenting with forms of Waterbending that drew on a kind of tension of fury and controlled frenzy began to stretch on for hours. She began to be tired and thirsty and hungry, but her grandfather did not care. He pushed her and he pushed her and he pushed her, as her limbs trembled and black spots began to crawl in her eyes. He kept pushing and then, after she had managed to demonstrate the octopus technique for Azulon, which stretched her abilities then to their limits, he mused to himself.

"Azula can summon lightning. I will need to speak to her, too."

Azulon, the idea occurring to him, neatly slipped out and Himiko slunk to the floor, exhausted, barely able to move her arms and her legs. As she fell forward, she only had time to see her father, Ozai, walking in with a look of worry and sorrow on his face and Ursa staring at her and at Ozai in shock.

She felt warm hands picking her up and spent a night with a mild meal and getting a lot of rest.

\--------

Azula was sitting with Mai listening to Ty Lee's animated descriptions of their lessons at the FIre Nation Academy, and hearing Ty Lee's satisfaction in surpassing the expectations of people who didn't realize what a skilled gymnast she was. Ty Lee had just finished her satisfied description of kicking someone in the face who didn't understand the right angle and how her instructor took her much more seriously after that given she'd warned him twice and he did not listen when Fire Lord Azulon, in full formal robes, stepped.

"Granddaughter," he said with a strange tone to his voice. "I wish to speak to you."

Azula kept her face still and nodded, and stepped out with Azulon. 

When she walked with him, it was not to his personal chamber, nor to the audience room. It was to the training ground where there was a faint salt tinge to the air, like when Himiko got lost in training the way she did sometimes, as a means to bury the rest of her troubles in the simplicity of bending. She didn't have the time to question that or the strange dampness in parts of it before her grandfather turned to her and in a very different tone of voice, eyes wide and his teeth shining in what a more foolish person would have seen as a grin, said:

"Your sister told me you can summon lightning."

He leaned down, then, his grey beard brushing against her face and she resisted the temptation to squirm, rightly figuring that Azulon would not handle it well.

"Show me."

She willed herself to focus, doing the forms necessary for Firebending and then Azulon's eyes went still wider at the first sights of her fire. It was _blue._ Only _Avatars_ wielded that color of fire when they firebended, or so the old stories said. Yet the Avatar, were he to have died, would have been reborn as a Waterbender, not a Firebender. That sight was one thing, then Azula put herself into the stillness to call lightning and his own hair stood on end as he smelled a smell of ozone that for someone he rage was as powerful as that of a trained soldier. And this was a girl who would at most have learned techniques in a half-skilled fashion from his lesser son.

When he saw the bolt and the sheer power of its impact and the explosive tremor on the ground, the strange thunderclaps that had come from the turtleduck pond suddenly had a very clear explanation.

Azula breathed for a moment, the sheer power at her disposal frightening her for a moment. She commanded blue flames that burned much hotter than usual. She couldn't risk hitting others with her own bending or she'd hurt them to a point that even what her father said was right couldn't make it so. And lighting? It was something requiring clarity but the raw power in it terrified her.

She looked at her hands with a disquiet, not seeing the way her grandfather's eyes narrowed as he moved his hands to his chin, and then he grabbed her wrist with him, and yanked her along with him to a point that it hurt, though experience with her father meant that she did not dare cry out. She wanted to, but she knew that the children of Ozai were not permitted mere responses to things like pain.

\------

When Ozai's door burst open, his eyes widened when he saw his father and his daughter.

Zuko was in his own room, a door down from his father, and Himiko to his left.

Azula, who he had not seen all day, made an audible gasp of relief and rubbed her wrist when her grandfather let go of it.

His father's leathery face split in the kind of grin that made him nervous, for very good reasons.

"Your daughter shoots lightning and commands blue fire, Ozai. Fire of the kind the Avatars produced, and lightning at the age of eight."

Ozai started.How did h- 

"Princess Himiko told me what Princess Azula can do. I said that you were right about women, my son, and you have more than proven so. Again.

You won't be teaching her how to master bending any more, son. Nor that little snow-eating savage your family adopted. I will be."

Then his gaze turned to both Ursa and himself.

"A daughter who can bend like the Avatars and shoot lightning at eight. I demanded eight children, and you have given me three. You will produce more if I have to order my Eyes and Ears to coerce you to lie with each other."

Ursa and Ozai looked at each other in mutual pallor, a look that he disregarded as he saw his granddaughter looking at him with a strange emotion. She looked at her hands again and there seemed to almost be fear in them of her power, of what she could do.

For a moment his face was marked by a snarl and it was the Azulon who had Xijing sacked and spent six weeks relishing the slaughter before realizing, at the end, what he had done and what it would mean.

He lashed out and slapped her to the ground, as she had the audacity to look at him with wounded eyes. He missed that Ursa wished to spring to her daughter's side before Ozai grabbed her and with a very determined look shook his head.

Azulon hissed as he leaned down next to Azula.

"Do not fear power, granddaughter. Power less than yours has made us master of over half the world. With your power at our disposal, we can become master of all of it. You will do great things, Azula. If you insist on treating your birthright as a thing to fear, I will make you fear me more than you ever could it, but you will wield it all the same."

\------

Ozai looked at his daughter with a mixture of pride and what others might have understood as emotions, half-present and half-formed. Pride, though, was fully formed. His daughter was his, and she'd managed to defy his father to his face in a way that he, for all his strength, had never been able to do so. She was crying, and even if he would have burned her for much less, he had cried like that, if not harsher, after a lesson from his father.

Yet there were little twitches in his eyes.

He remembered a childhood of long hours and one where he and Iroh were both as thin as he still was. Hours on hours of training and drilling that made them superlative masters of bending, without equal in the world. Even if the Avatar recovered or proved alive or some Waterbender awoke to destiny's cruel trumpet sound, he was not sure that in a straight fight between himself and an Avatar, and certainly not with the Dragon of the West and one that it'd work the same way.

But it had been an empty childhood that he wondered if it accounted for his own emptiness, for the inability to know what others knew.

Ozai would never understand love, nor anything but the most merciless show of strength, yet at the thought of his own children, even Himiko, who was no child of his by blood but one by heart in a way that he was taking increasing pride in, living the kind of childhood that had made him there were trembles in his hand and his left eye twitched in a spastic fashion. There was warmth down his cheeks, and a taste of salt in his lips, as he remembered the blackened devastated Earth of the training ground and knowing that it was only Iroh's determination and vice versa that kept him from breaking his nose more in the dust of the ground than he had.

He went catatonic for a time, not knowing that Ursa had taken Azula to bed and kissed her forehead, whispering to her that she loved her and that she and her father would do all they could to keep her safe and that they would never leave. He did not see that Ursa saw him this way and went pale from the sheer shock of it.

\-------

Lady Hino, wife of Iroh, read his letter with satisfaction. The letter described that the campaign was going well, the Earth Kingdom's instincts that the supply lines had to be assaulted showed that they understood what to do, but they lacked the power to withstand it. Fire Nation explosive powder boosting Firebending and torpedoes in the ground had wreaked merciless havoc on would-be ambushers.

She looked up that day when there was a knock upon her door. Placing the letter down and adjusting her topknot, feeling a bit of sorrow at the threads of grey in hair that had once been a lustrous black, she went to the door and opened it.

Out of everyone she would have expected to see, Prince Ozai was not one.

"Crown Princess Hino, may I come in?"

She expected still less that Ozai Lackland, of all the possible people who could have done it, would be there, nor that he'd have of everything he could have had in his hand a sheaf of paper and a set of expressions on his face like a man trying to process emotions and incapable of quite doing it.

"Of course, Prince Ozai. Come in."

\-------

Lu Ten smiled as he waited with his men in the prepared trenches. His men had objected to the idea of digging trenches facing an Earth Kingdom army full of Earthbenders. They'd declared that the benders would seek to simply bury them alive and not go further. If it was a force facing another Fire Nation general, he had no doubt it would be so but his opponents believed him an honorable sort and mistook his simply taking precautions to save his men's lives for a respect for their own traditions. He was content to let the illusion exist, because it made the horrors of war less horrible.

This was a night attack, and it would be one of the larger ones. The Earth Kingdom was desperate to save time and to prevent the existing armies from arriving. The reinforcements, a letter from the Fire Lord noted, were on their way, and that would make his father's vision possible. For now there was seeking to counter a tactic of the Earth Kingdom generals simple in its concept but devastating in its execution.

He knew that the Fire Lord and others of the high command viewed the Earth Kingdom and its generals as simple brute-minded fools who won victories by the sheer weight of their numbers, not by martial skill. Nothing he'd seen in this war justified that assertion. They were not seeking to fight the Fire Nation's armies at the lead where they had tanks and armored personnel carriers. They were trying to interdict its supply lines.

That was a lovely phrase for destroying machines and victuals and leaving bodies broken and sundered and the ground reeking with the iron odor of blood and the richer smell of offal. Of course he and his own side were working to do the same thing so he couldn't spare that much grief, which was where phrases like 'interdicting supply lines' found their merits.

The Earth Kingdom told a strange and insulting tale about the great victory at Xijing, too. It claimed that rather than a major battle that led to one of the most comprehensive victories fought against a dishonorable foe that locked his army in a city and refused to allow civilians to leave that it was a massacre of rape, looting, and butchery that unfolded for six weeks. A calculated atrocity of the kind that no nation that unleashed such a deed could see those who allowed the deed to unfold to live. He had heard the story but dismissed it. If it were true, grandfather would have told him, or father.

He'd talked about it with Father a couple of times but all that happened was that his father's face went pale and he told his son that perhaps he might want to consider that the enemy might know more than not.

That tale was on his mind as he waited with his men for the Earth Kingdom forces, whose bending brought little trembles of dirt to the trenches (another reason for digging them, they were a built-in tripwire). War was war, war meant fighting and fighting meant killing.

When they were close enough, he fired a set of fireballs in the sky that served to light the scene and then the Earth Kingdom soldiers stared in mute horror. The riches of a supply line that promised more food than the stingy quartermaster corps of Ba Sing Se and its dreaded Dai Li offered, the cheap gains and easy glory of war had turned into an attack on a Fire Nation force one and a half times the size of their own.

Lu Ten sprang up from the trenches first, shouting "For Himiko and Izanami!" The old Fire Nation war cry,from the era of the Unity.

"For Azulon and the Dragon of the West!" The troops behind him echoed, and then he watched as his troops summoned firebending and wielded their tubes that could summon an artificially created kind of bending to attack the Earth Kingdom soldiers. Not expecting a true battle, they were far too densely packed and their ability to command in the field broke down within seconds.

When lighting fried two of their most determined leaders, the effect was instantaneous. The troops broke and fled headlong in a rout. Later he learned that two of their most capable tactical leaders in the earlier stage of the campaign died, one struck by the lightning, the other trampled to death trying to stem the rout and to force a battle that had it lasted longer could have done much more damage.

It was the last of the major attacks on the Fire Nation's supply lines, for by now the Fire Nation had encountered the Lines of Wu-Kong, a strong set of defenses meant to halt their advance, if not to outright reverse it. With that the next and some of the most bitter fighting preceding the Siege of Ba Sing Se would begin.


	7. He is trampling out the vintage:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Fire Nation Army smashes through the Line of Wu-Kong to begin the Siege of Ba Sing Se.
> 
> In the Fire Nation capital intrigues begin to swirl and the fell hand of destiny begins to maneuver events as it sees fit.

_Lady Hino's Chambers, Eight Months Prior:_

"What is it?" Her voice was curious, flavored with a bit of worry. She wondered if Ozai was going to throw some sort of fit over being excluded from power again, as if she would do anything for him even if she could do anything.

He handed her the papers which she held with an eyebrow cocked and her head cocked likewise.

"What exactly am I to do with this?"

"Read it. And then when you have read it, return it to me."

Opening them, she read with a startled look on her face as she realized the nature of the very secret her family had concealed. The Thing, they called it, that they would not tell her but had known among themselves. 

"I'm-I'm"

"Yes," Ozai's voice was smug, with a hint of a sadistic relish to it.

"You are a descendant of Avatar Kyoshi. Your son is likewise."

His glare was extremely cold and as she heard the words fear crawled up her spine with an electric heat.

"Wait, we are..."

Ozai's grin was an unpleasant and a beastly thing and she shuddered to see it.

"Yes, you are also products of the thing that has blighted my family and my life. Now, I can do two things with this. I can tell my father that my dear older brother is also married to an heir of an Avatar and get him no doubt recalled from the war to father a few more children himself. Or....."

And he gestured to the papers. "You can give them to me, and you will spend the rest of your life knowing that where you were so focused on my brother and making him as weak and decadent as you are, I found out something that could truly balance the scales, and have hidden it. And you will live the rest of your life knowing that Ozai Flintheart, as you called me, is keeping a secret that could hurt you, and which would hurt you."

She shoved the papers into his hands.

"And what will you do with that secret?"

Ozai's smile was cynical. "Nothing. For in this case, the knowledge that you and he owe me that you have a family life as you have had it is the greatest reward I need."

_Fire Lord's Chambers, Eight Months Later:_

Another day, another set of exercises at desk work. Azulon _really_ regretted at these times that his ancestors had not though through all of the implications of concentrating power in the hands of the Fire Lord. His armies were waging a world war, new raids against the Northern and Southern water tribes were in the offing, with newly commissioned Admiral Zhao preparing to face a Water Tribe Fleet. His forces in the Earth Kingdom were facing a powerful fortified line where the fighting had rippled these last months, fighting slow and costly and heavily so for both sides. The Earth Kingdom had mass, it was how it waged and won wars.

The Wu Kong Line, he'd learned from reports his son and grandson had written. That was what this primitive mass of detritus his armies were still fighting, _still_ fighting all these decades later when that terrible rite and massacre in Xijing should have shattered them for all time, called it. Wu Kong, their warrior-god, to add extra insult was a damned ape. A suitably emotional and primitive focus for the Earth Kingdom and its stolid masses, but the name equally unfortunately was earned. Up to this point the drives had finally brought the Fire Nation to a decisive victory, or the nature of one.

Ba Sing Se, the capital of the Kingdom, was its last major city besides Omashu and a few other, smaller ones to hold out. If Ba Sing Se fell, he was sure, the war would be over. Even the determination of the Earth Kings to keep fighting after the massacre could not outweigh the fall of their capital, could it? The Earth King, Wu Zi, had declared that "Not one step back shall we take. Here we stand, we can do no other. For the safety and the liberty of our people and of all the world, Ba Sing Se stands. Let the Dragon of the West breathe fire all he will. Ba Sing Se shall never fall. There shall never be war in Ba Sing Se!"

A good speech, that. Brutish leader of a brutish people might he be but the 51st Earth King did know how to give one Hell of a speech. Pity for him was that speeches did not give his armies the power to withstand the Fire Nation. Only a carefully laid set of trenches bought and paid for by the string of raids on Fire Nation supply lines (and there he had to credit his son with vision. The Dragon of the West had anticipated the war for Ba Sing Se would become one of vicious mass campaigns where he had not) had done that.

Eight months, now. Eight months of training his grandchildren and taking pride in their skills. Himiko was learning the true glories of the properly civilized world, as opposed to the peoples of what he'd learned from her she called the Cold. A beautiful language they had, and they were capable in the North, at least, of still resisting with enough Water benders amid the snow his navies and his raids. Beautiful language but savages in furs that ate meat cooked over an open fire were not a worthy legacy.

He had taught her this, reinforced it. She had dared to speak up against him and asked him how, in front of her own sister no less, if the Water Tribe was truly that primitive and worthless it had withstood his conquests for so long.

After he had struck her with three powerful lightning bolts and she'd fallen to the ground smoking and he'd heard Azula scream the child's name in the barbarian tongue, he'd come out of the rage-filled haze. It was the only time in his life he'd ever seen his lesser son _furious_ at the ways his lessons were hardening his children. Ozai. He shook his head. Weak in all ways.

The lessons had lapsed for around a month, until today, after that. That girl had dared to ask him the wrong kind of question at the wrong time, and he hoped that the lesson would ensure she'd learned the right lesson and would not do so again.

Desk work. More forms. Telling lords in outlying islands and in the hinterland that no, they could not indulge in this pettifoggery that took up far too much of his time. Responding to one particularly insolent letter by threatening to send in Mongke and the Rough Rhinos to ensure that the peasants holding out on taxes of wealth and manpower would cough them up or he'd give them the mercy he gave Xijing.

Finally, as he heard the chiming of bells to mark the passage of time, things had gon-

He received a communication from the front.

\------

_The Lines of Wu Kong:_

After eight months of vicious slugging matches where the most powerful deeds of Firebenders and Earthbenders were at work, Crown Prince Iroh had finally come up with a strategy that was audacious in its simplicity and in its direct force. He'd made his name with sneakiness and use of maneuver strategies meant to lessen the cost of the war while providing greater advantages but time and experience had taught the Earth Kingdom to expect this. Flanking offensives had failed. Simply concentrating manpower at specific points with reserves had also failed. 

Bloody battles had been fought here, the costliest since his father's war had begun, and the Earth Kingdom was no doubt encouraged that even if it had not won the battles it had not lost them. For the first time since the Battle of Hu Xin, the biggest and bloodiest of the conquest of the Hu Xin provinces, the Earth Kingdom had begun to win campaigns. Other generals were frustrated but Iroh and Lu Ten understood and understood instinctively. The Earth Kingdom knew that it was running out of space. It had manpower to spare, but it had the most decisive campaign of the war looming for it and then what would become of it and of its allies?

Azulon's brutal raids on the Southern Water Tribe had extinguished its benders and destroyed its most powerful armies, reducing a centralized kingdom to a confederacy of tribes led by a paramount chief, Hakoda, who in another context would have been King of the South. The Northern Tribe faced Admiral Zhao's great offensive.

And Ba Sing Se itself now faced what could be the war-winning campaign. The Alliance, as the armies ringed against the Fire Nation called themselves, was in its worst years of the war to this point. Iroh understood instinctively that with their backs to the wall the Earth Kingdom were going to fight harder, because if they did not their very nation might fall never to rise again.

He understood this, and he empathized, to a degree. His son's statements on his nephew and nieces had concerned him more than he let on, and even moreso when he learned in a letter from his brother that his father had taken a personal hand in mentoring them. He remembered those lessons and how their mother had saved their lives. It may have been unkind but he did not think his brother was necessarily likely to do that for his own son or daughters. The idea of Ozai rescuing his children or feeling fear for them? If anything this was its own incentive to win this campaign, as he had a bad feeling that if he did not his nieces and perhaps even his nephew might end up dead for, after all, Azulon did not need them in the way he needed himself or Lu Ten.

He saw the engineers rising from the tunnels carefully built and where the Earth Kingdom's senses had been warded against by more powerful bombardments and careful use of large-scale lightning. Even if he did not relish war and carnage as his father and his brother did, there was something glorious in seeing the sky crackle with the ozone aura of lightning and hearing the thunder peal. Careful intelligence and raids had shown where there were supply dumps and ammunition and the rising columns of smoke and the odors of fire and panicked screams from part of the Earth Nation lines showed that these distractions were both reaping rewards and that, after all the months of frustration, the intelligence department for a rare chance actually lived up to its name.

The engineers gave him the nod and he sent the order quietly with a set of pulses of communication in firebending. As a deliberate part of a gambit to keep the Earth Kingdom's armies distracted, at a pre-planned and rehearsed signal that had admittedly seen a great deal of controversy before he ramrodded it through, the Fire Nation's raiders withdrew from multiple sectors, not just the one where the explosive weapon was located.

As the Earth Kingdom cheered the cheers were silenced when the ground began to tremble and then in a thunderous eruption of fire and earth, even Iroh gaped in simple horrified awe at the shape the explosion took. The Line of Wu Kong, that had held for eight months against the Dragon of the West and withstood all of his more standard maneuvers and ruses, shattered in the mist of an attack of such brutish simplicity that it gave him a momentary wry amusement that he'd turned his father's favorite line of nastiness against the Earth Kingdom into a virtue for theirs. The explosion was a towering thing and it resembled nothing so much as the world's biggest mushroom, and the shockwave with the blast was what he would have imagined facing an army of Airbenders might have been like if the murder of their Nation had failed.

The battlefield was momentarily silent, the Earth Kingdom's ranks silenced. The wracking of their supply lines was a momentary issue, for soldiers with determination never starved in a war. A power, the Fire Nation turning their very _element_ against them in its own style, no less, of this nature was one they had no response to. For minutes they stared in horrified shock, minutes in which the Fire Nation's ranks surged around the vast crater that had formed in the ground and neatly bypassed their line in a single overpowering crack.

As his own army, in large part, was as initially paralyzed for a moment as the Earth Kingdom's remained, Iroh sent a signal he'd agreed upon and drew back his head and then _breathed_ an enormous column of orange flame and his armies' will snapped from the paralysis to a business-like motion. After eight months of bruising bloody battles, a line that had held seemingly against every trick the Dragon of the West could pull cracked in a single matter of minutes and by the time the Earth Kingdom's armies realized the nature of the disaster a newer and equally vicious fight followed.

Two hundred thousand troops had stood off just over one hundred and fifty thousand in that battle for eight months. Barely sixty thousand dragged into Ba Sing Se, and of them only half that number were uninjured and the troops that skulked back into the city gaze in a horrified manner known as the Soldier's Stare.

\------

Azulon read Lu Ten's letter and then laughed for a few minutes with a crude almost grunting sound.

"Broke the Earth Kingdom with an explosive. Perfectly in line with your methods, my greater son."

With that he dragged himself away from his chair and in a good mood went down to the training area. After a months lapse, Princess Himiko had fully recovered three blasts of lightning and it would be time for the next lesson. He hoped that she had learned hers, for otherwise.....

\-------

_Ozai's chambers, a few minutes prior:_

Himiko trembled with visible fear, as even her father's greatest cruelties could not stop her feeling that at the thought of facing Azulon again. For a wonder her father did not judge her fear, nor the ways Zula put her hand around her shoulder and couldn't resist her own trembling in her right hand. It would be one of the few times in their lives that would be true. Himiko could walk again and she'd healed the damage to her face, though her hair was rather shorter than it had been as the lightning had burned most of her long locks so badly they'd had to be chopped off and the Fire Nation barber who'd done this had done so in a manner more that of a butcher than a stylist. 

Zula and Zuko had been growing apart for a time, Zula taking to calling Zuko Dum Dum and spending her time otherwise with two new people in their lives. One a dour and quiet woman with long hair whose face seemed carven of fine marble. One an acrobat of a flexibility that was almost unbelievable if she had not seen it. And her body never showed the signs of damage that true contortionists did. Mai and Ty Lee had been there the day that Azulon had come for them and Zula had taken to spending a lot of her time she did not spend in lessons with them. Away from the pond, and from both her brother and her sister.

What the nature of her relationship was with those two, Himiko did not know.

And then a month ago a question in simple innocence had seen Cold become Lightning and she had _burned_ and felt the power of Fire in its most dreadful shape. And for a time Ty Lee and Mai had been less a part of Zula's life and she had spent more time with both Zuko and with her. It was Zuko who'd spent more time at her side reading her stories from the Ember Island romances, and one even from the Water Tribes. Her grandfather had told her that her ancestral people were primitive savages who dwelt in snow. Yet the story told her of the Moon and how the Moon governed things was beautiful, hauntingly so.

Then he had read a story of Amarok, the Wolf that sought those who'd gone astray and she'd listened with rapt wonder. She had dreams of a wolf from time to time, more frequently when lying in bed. A gigantic thing twice the size of the largest bears of the poles. A thing of glowing eyes and fangs that spoke with a voice of thunder.

Otherwise he read to her of Fire Nations tories and there was a whimsy and a beauty in the old tales that was not there in the ones that Azulon and even Sozin had approved of. Zula was there too but she seemed subdued, even apologetic. She'd tried to talk to Zuko but he didn't listen to her much, claiming she lied (and she had to admit, the Zula of these moments was not the one she saw on the sparring ground or elsewhere. One of the Zulas was fake, and it was clear which one was).

Now, she was walking with Zula to that place where she'd been hurt before and it was that other Zula who spoke to her quietly, telling her of a plan. An idea she'd discussed with her at times when she wasn't silent and listening to Zuko's tales and saying nothing. Their grandfather had hurt them all, and there was that plan.

Zula seemed rapturous. "We will make him know fear as he has made us," she said, a few times. Her delivery stiff and formal, almost robotic. Ozai's perfect daughter in every way.

The training itself was arduous for two hours of continual rehearsal of forms but it would not be otherwise. Zula had gone from lighting to _flight._ Well, sort of. She could propel herself in a way that left Himiko amazed and even slightly awed. With it she could jump and touch the roof, and even Azulon had wondered just what she could do with that in a less confined space. It left Azula more exhausted than usual when she did it for a long period of time. but....

"Now, my grandchildren, show me what you can do....together."

Weariness made their limbs heavy, but Himiko and Azula looked at each other with a determined look on their faces. This was an idea that they'd discussed, at times, in half-sentences with the distrust that the experiences with their father had already started to sow. Here, against their grandfather, they had a common enemy and in a foreshadowing of the future as it would evolve in ways they could not foresee, they worked together. When clouds began to gather over the training ground, seemingly rising from mid-air (in truth an extension of the larger amounts of water Himiko had quietly gathered) Azulon stared blankly. There was a sense of anticipation and a dampness in the air unusual in the heat of the Fire Nation capital, and beyond the training ground the palace became muggy and it seemed as if the world held its breath.

When the lightning fell from the clouds he was astonished, for it fell not as the singular bolts that Azula conjured in her youthful inexperience but in sheets. Nature, called into being by human will. When the rain fell with the lightning and the electricity seemed to loop through the water, his stunned look became one of first awe, and then fear.

_They had summoned the storm. He had named the wrong children after the storm-god_

He watched as the storm grew, and then his fear became a very brief existential terror as its power built and the electricity and water churned the Earth and made it a sea of mud. The storm intensified and it built for another quarter-hour by which time the ground had gone from its older blackened self to a new set of patterns that would ossify as it dried and change things in a way he could not have anticipated. When he called the exercise short, it was with a pale face and a slight stammer to his words, and he missed the look that passed between the faces of Zula and Himiko when he stammered. 

They were freed to go find their brother, and for a change, they crested on a good emotion and good feelings. They were sisters again.

Heading to the most likely place, they did indeed find him there, and what's more, with Mai and Ty Lee with him.

Zuko was practicing katas and showing off, bantering with Ty Lee, even as Mai sat there and watched.

He smiled broadly at his sisters, feeling some relief at their calmness with an around each other.

He turned to them fully and puffed out his chest, with pride, as Zula cocked her head and Himiko crossed her arms in front of her chest raising an eyebrow.

"Father told me you could shoot lightning, Zula."

She nodded, a soft smile of pride on her face.

"Well, watch me do it too!"

The pride vanished and she twitched, slightly.

"Zu-zu, it's...not easy to channel lightning. Even I took a bit to learn how to do it right. Have you actually done it before?"

He shook his head.

"Saw the forms in the scrolls. All it takes is concentration and stillness. I can concentrate, I can be still," he said as he fidgeted with excitement. 

Himiko's lips drew back in worry and Zula's eye twitched.

"Zu-zu you don't have t-"

They felt the ozone, then, and for the first time they glimpsed a part of what dear Zuko could be if he had more confidence in his powers. It built to an extent that hair stood on end (and in Ty Lee's case became bushier and wilder). Then light flashed and there was a terrifyingly loud explosion and Mai and Himiko dropped to their knees holding their ears in pain and Azula and Zuko were hurled off their feet, both of their ears ringing and Azula's vision greyer.

"Zu-zu?" She called, nearly shouting, as her ears rang very loudly.

Nothing, no sounds.

"Zu-zu!" From questioning there was worry, even fear.

She staggered up and saw Himiko, vaguely, kneeling beside Zu-zu with worry made sharper by how little she could see.

"What's happening with him?" She asked five times, before hearing Himiko as if more deeply in water.

"He's out. His head is bleeding. I'll see what I can do" and even with her exhaustion she focused her healing. The swelling went down, and eventually so did the ringing in their ears. Azula found herself crying, something she hadn't done since that day but since their father was so much less cruel to them now she might get away with it. When Zuko finally awoke with a slurred "Whajusthapp-" she literally tackled him and hugged him as she hadn't since she was very young. He looked at her in confusion. The sister who'd thrown bread at the turtleducks some when she was younger (and then stopped and stopped going near the pond altogether though he thought sometimes she might feed them otherwise as they were less scared of her than they could have been) and who boasted about her forms and treated him like dung left from a komodo rhino's passage was reacting like this.

Azula always lies, he'd come to believe. If this was a lie it was at least one he wanted to believe right then.

Their father and mother rushed in, then, a look of fear on her face and worry on his. He did not see their father looking at Azula with the tears on her face, none of them did, not even Azula.

Their mother picked him up (and he was older than all of them, seeing himself as more of a man than a boy and yet he hurt badly).

For a moment Mai and Ty Lee did see the look on Ozai's face and the way lightning seemed to crackle around his eyes, and they found an excuse to leave.

When Azula came to eat with them that evening she was stiff and her gestures were likewise stiff, and she was subdued. Ty Lee remembered the ugly snarl on Ozai's face and the way he'd zeroed in on Azula's face. She remembered that and the way Azula moved and the sudden look of existential dread on her face when Mai casually mentioned her father, something that Mai saw and dismissed, then.

In that single moment her eyes met Azula's and the sheer _terror_ in Azula seeing what she _knew_ and had seen meant that their friend suddenly ran out of the room, knocking her chair over, breathing in that kind of rapid breathing they'd never seen before and only later called it hyperventilating.

Mai raised an eyebrow. "What the-?"

Ty Lee had an inkling, then, but said nothing.

For three weeks Azula avoided them, or only spoke to Mai. Those were lonely weeks for Ty Lee, Azula having fewer lessons with them and more with the Fire Lord himself and even when she was clearly more than half run ragged she would still make the point.

It took her cornering Azula, a thing she regretted then and moreso later, and telling her why she was avoiding her for the two to speak words, quietly, that lingered.

"You know," was all Azula had said, then. A single phrase, emotionless. Almost a mirror of Prince Ozai's tones.

Ty Lee took the challenge direct and responded direct. "Yes, I know Prince Ozai did something to hurt you. Should I tell someone? The Fire Lord?"

Azula's fear at that prospect led her to wince. "OK, not the Fire Lord. Your mother?" 

Azula shook her head. "She thinks I'm a monster. She has to. I can command blue fire and I can almost fly, and I'm too young for any of that. Who but a monster could do this, at my age?"

It was an eerily adult statement from someone Azula's age and it went over Ty Lee's head. All she heard then was that her friend was lonely and afraid and she hugged Azula, the other girl freezing and then looking at her with a lack of comprehension that led her to hug her more firmly, and Azula finally, belatedly, and tentatively accepted it.

Two nights later Prince Zuko was finally able to be up and move again, though he'd glowed for even the time he was in his bed at his father's pride in the sheer power of the backfire and the first sign that his son might have some real power in him after all.

He'd tried to talk to Azula then and his sister shunned him except to growl angrily at him: "I told you not to do that, Dum-Dum!" 

It was the next day, a day of fateful significance for their family and for the Fire Nation on the whole, when their grandfather gathered them, their father, their mother, Himiko, and others of the Fire Nation's best and brightest.

He held in his hands a letter from his son, the Crown Prince.

Even Aunt Hino, who mostly avoided their side of the family altogether was there, a look of pride and some visible worry on her face.

"Our great armies have clasped a ring of iron around Ba Sing Se! The Siege that can and will end this war has begun! My son begins to fulfill his destiny!"

That was all that was there, officially. No training that day and Grandfather Azulon in so good a mood that the Fire Nation palace seemed much brighter than usual.

\--------

That evening Ozai received a letter from General Mongke. The prison-warden in the prison in the southernmost colony had indeed agreed to accept the bribe, and to accept it in installments. Only when it was fully paid would the Witch be moved from that prison to the Boiling Rock.

Ozai's smile was a carnivorous thing holding that letter.

Then he turned to other ones, and his smile wavered less. Good friends of his, including another of those who'd distinguished himself in the raids and had become known as the Hammer. Each of his friends had pledged loyalty to him in a scheme of audacity that it would take away even his own breath. If his father would give him so little as to take away the chance to raise and hone his own children, to disinherit him even here, then he would show his father how much of a monster he could actually be.

When the Witch came to the Boiling Rock, and his favored generals and small numbers of their troops were ready, he would give his brother a throne and do what he truly wanted, or so he told himself then. Iroh would be the one to sit in the palace in a gilded cage away from everything, and it would be Ozai who would take up his brother's legacy and win the war that his brother had almost decided.

Ba Sing Se, he had a feeling, would decide nothing if it did fall. Omashu and other so-called smaller kingdoms still endured, and they did not obey the will of Ba Sing Se when it held. Why would they do so if it did fall?

Visions of glory danced behind his eyes and he turned to papers that he'd artfully concealed. The papers that would permit him to wield the Lady Hino as a lever to manipulate his brother. The smile went from carnivorous to the kind of grin that in later years would unman even the most vicious of the Fire Nation's generals, reducing their legs to quivering jelly, the grin that would become a sign of something the Fire Nation would remember in later years with fear and trembling.


	8. "From iron comes strength."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A year into the Siege of Ba Sing Se the world holds its breath as one of the decisive battles of the Hundred Year War rages in its fullest severity. 
> 
> For Prince Zuko it's been one of the best years of his life. 
> 
> For Azula and Himiko it's been a harsher one. 
> 
> For Crown Princess Hino and Fire Lord Azulon it is a longer and harsher year yet.

_The Siege of Ba Sing Se:_

For a year the armies of the Fire Nation under its greatest general had ringed the capital of the Earth Kingdom. The year had given the Fire Nation the luxury of setting up a full and established supply line of the kind that would have made its earlier great generals and Azulon in his days of field command weep with envy. No Fire Nation troops went ill-clad, none went hungry. That Ba Sing Se did not was a result of the cruel yet mercilessly rational logic of the Fifty First Earth King that the Dai Li would take those too weak to endure the full scale of the siege and quietly send them to flee in tunnels dug beneath the city, to try to find food and shelter elsewhere.

The lord of the Dai Li had demanded that the useless eaters be eliminated out of hand, stating "To keep them is no gain, to lose them is no loss." King Wu Zi had rejected it out of hand, and had then managed to buy the city time. Its population had shrunk by a quarter and Lake Laogai provided just enough water to keep crops enough that people could eat if they did not eat too much. Even the Earth King had a monotonous diet and where once he had been a very hefty man, now his skin hung in great folds from his body. Lightning assailed the city from the Firebenders ringing it, the power of the thunderstorm wracking it. Armies would seek to try to bash into the walls but the earth would rise up to devour them or great clods of dirt would move at lethal velocities.

A year. The first two relief attempts had been defeated in great masterpieces of set-piece battle where Crown Prince Iroh had in the second case done something that would endure for a very long time in the annals of military history. Finding himself outnumbered by the sheer weight of an Earth Kingdom army that albeit had more ill-trained peasants than true soldiers in this case, he had drawn it into a double encirclement and captured no less than a hundred twenty thousand Earth Kingdom soldiers, in full sight of the city. It had been a dark day for Ba Sing Se, made worse by the outer walls of the city falling when Prince Lu Ten, the Golden Prince, had led an army that shattered through those walls with a repeat of the same explosive trick that had brought down the Wu-Kong line.

By then enough of a new wall had been built that a truncated Ba Sing Se still held, and its more compact lines meant it was a stronger nut to crack than it had been before. Yet it was a nut facing a sledgehammer in the form of the two most grimly efficient generals of the Fire Nation.

Ba Sing Se rocked beneath lightning and artillery and its walls burned. There was the old joke that "There is no war in Ba Sing Se", now spoken in mockery. Another grim joke began that in the future peasants would be able to walk from one extent of city to the other and then their friend said "That's wonderful, Jin, but what are you going to do in the afternoon?" Ba Sing Se burned, and even on days where news from the front said "All is quiet" there were bitter moments where soldiers on both sides fought with desperate heroism and yet their bodies were ground and burned in the bloodmill of the siege.

A thousand thousand stories could be told of the siege, of the boredom in some sectors where both sides established live and let live rules. Of small actions of bitter ferocity where one side or another would seek to break the monotony with attacks, fought in darkness and in daylight and both sides devastated in the process. Of the wailing of families whose sons and fathers and grandfathers were drawn to replenish the losses, and who saw shrouded sheets return. In a war that had begun in horror, the Siege of Ba Sing Se held more horrors of the greater and intimate scales than most of its battles.

Crown Prince Iroh saw all of this and his face became troubled. In later years it was said that the incident that would see the Siege broken had changed him, that fate had taken something of great value from him and only then had he begun to question things. In truth his wife, the Fire Sage Hino, had already begun to let him see those aspects. She had told him of the deeper truths of what the Fire Nation suppressed in its histories, she had shown him that the cruelties his father took for granted were not the only ways to be. That a son who grew with her standard of love over Azulon's could be someone that none of his predecessors were. A balanced human being, able to truly live and not to chirp in a gilded cage for the amusement of the old king.

That had begun the process. The sheer viciousness of the Siege and seeing the desperate courage of the Earth Kingdom, the constant sonorous wailing of their people and the realization, upon one moment, that a terrible roar had occurred where his son served, and the thought that then it might be he who was broken by that loss himself (though Prince Lu Ten had not only survived, he'd single-handedly beaten back an attack in a battle that left him in a red haze and then weeping sorrow in his father's arms in a private moment between them) had done it. War, he had come to realize, was a brutal and futile thing.

As he sat and composed a letter to his wife, remembering her kindly eyes as green as the grass of the steppes of the eastern Fire Nation. he smiled. The War had taken so much from so many but he was able to see his son grow into a fine man, and to know that his wife would be there. She had waited too long, and so had he. Soon, the war would be over.

\------

_Fire Nation training grounds:_

Darkness hovered at the edges of Azula and Himiko's visions as their arms were leaden. They heard Azulon's voice speaking with fire and thunder:

"We of the Fire Nation are those born to be masters of others. By us is culture born, by us is it decided. We have built a world that breaks the bonds of the serf and the lord, we have become the lords in turn of all we survey. Our women shall become equal to our men in all ways, where they are not. By our hands has the world risen from the squalid darkness of the lesser nations to that of the greater."

His eyes turned to Himiko.

"You are a proof of that greatness, Princess. From the unpromising foundation of snow savages you have become a princess of refined and civilized power."

He did not see, nor choose to see, that Himiko was wavering and her body trembling, nor to hear the exhaustion in her breathing and that of his other granddaughter.

"And you, Princess Azula, have learned much. From lessons in the academy, to lessons at my hand. You can summon the storm."

As he folded his hands watching, he felt motion out of his peripheral vision and was then momentarily puzzled at the sight of three people who had never actually seen the exercises, only their aftermath.

Crown Princess Hino had gone with Prince Ozai and Princess Ursa at their request, going more for her sake than his. When they had gone there, she stared in mute horror. These were _children_ a few steps away from fainting. This was what Ozai wanted her to see, the price for descent from an Avatar becoming known to his father. This could have been Lu Ten's life, it could still be it if Ozai said anything.

She gasped, and Azulon turned to them with simple disinterest on his face, brushing his grey beard.

"Yes, Crown Princess?"

"They're about to fall on their faces, great Fire Lord Azulon. Surely you can see that." Her voice was hesitant and her tone respectful but her eyes were searing judgments. Azulon wanted to snarl at that but then he turned and his visions of the glory of his Master Race that sprawled across the world and reshaped it in his image and in his likeness for all time faded.

He blinked.

For a moment it was _Llah folding her arms in front of her chest. "My sons are not animals, Azulon, and I know you. You wouldn't work an animal this way." For a moment, beneath her gaze, he felt an emotion he seldom felt,shame.  
_

A single tear formed in his right eye at the memory of Llah and then he turned to his granddaughters.

"You can go."

With that he spoke quietly to his son and daughters-in-law, and agreed to lessen the time that the children would spend training, and to allow them a single meal a day.

Crown Princess Hino's eye twitched but his son was surprisingly warm. There was a strange expression on Princess Ursa's face but he was used to ignoring the brood mare except when she had the arrogance to have any kind of an opinion as if she was more than a warm body for the production of his weapons in his presence.

\-------

_Ursa's chambers, that evening:_

"So the old buzzard let them go, then?"

"For one meal, Ikem. One meal."

Ikem stiffened. "He doesn't even let them eat?"

Ursa shook her head. "No. I wondered sometimes why Ozai hated his father as much as he did and why he's been as relaxed about our own life, at times, even with the noble way of doing things."

She bit her lip and shook her head, sighing heavily,before continuing. "I understand him now, and I wish I didn't."

She looked to him. "Hold me." He did so and she stared into space for a long time before slipping into an uneasy light sleep.

\-------

_Ozai''s chambers, that same evening:_

In what would be a rare thing for him, Ozai had checked on his daughters as they slept.

Ursa did this sometimes and there were looks on her face that showed those things he did not understand, not fully. He hoped that if he did that, seeing them sleeping and sleeping soundly and gaining a meal during everything when Iroh and he had never had such things, that he might understand them. All he did was look and listen to them breathing, and then he returned to his chambers where he read and re-read the latest letter from Mongke and the small cabal of generals he was amassing as allies.

The last installment of the bribe had been given. The Witch, the Blood-Bender, would be moved to the Boiling Rock by air transport to keep the water-bender away from the ocean. Things were at last beginning to fall into place.

His finger brushed his chin, and then he turned in for the night where he slept very soundly indeed.

\------

Prince Zuko did not know what to make of these times with his father then, or in retrospect.

"My son, you must understand something very simple. One of the reasons you struggle most is that Firebending requires a mastery of something very simple and yet very complex. How much of the breathing exercises do you do?"

"I.....Father, it seems so stupid to do that."

Ozai's smile for a moment was understanding, as understanding as they ever would be. 

"I understand, my son. It does seem foolish. And yet it is a necessity. Breathing is a thing that most take for granted, but in Firebending it is an essential part of drawing on your chi and the power and the strength of the fires within us."

Zuko nodded.

"I....when I was young I struggled the same way. I could see others shooting lightning or fire and the idea that simply breathing the right way would do things did not make sense. But you must."

As Zuko began the exercises, Ozai sat patiently. His daughters were training with his father and those memories meant that he would spend the next two years bonding with his son in the only ways he really could. Bending exercises, and proving to himself that he could be a less brutal disciplinarian than his father, and a more effective one. Watching his son and seeing his improvement sent a small amount of warmth to what was otherwise a cold relationship, and then Ozai looked at him carefully.

"Now, show me the katas you were working on earlier."

For the first time in Zuko's life, after all his earlier struggles, he Firebended effortlessly, in front of his father's keen eyes, using the training that he was taught.

The sight of that warmth in Ozai's eyes would be a memory to last and to trouble him in later years. At this time when he was learning and able to make his father genuinely happy with him, it was wonderful.

Zuko's firebending would grow by leaps and bounds, though next to what Zula could do it seemed unimpressive to him. For a rare change, as long as Fire Lord Azulon still lived, his father seemed about to make comments to that effect, particularly when he viewed his own conjurations of flames and the way his flames danced in response to his motions next to her feats. His father's mouth would close and he would say nothing, though sometimes his kinder words seemed stilted and forced. Zuko did not notice nor care. His parents both loved him, and he made them both happy.

He wanted this moment to last forever.

\-------

Mai was not with them, today.

"She's with your brother, I think."

Azula sipped the tea with an almost pathetic gratitude. She was here with Ty Lee, with the only person in her life who knew _something_ of what she was struggling with.

She didn't say much (and her uncle would in later years come to find that their mutual enjoyment of tea, forged in these moments, snatched between lessons in the academy and with Azulon, would be a means to bond. Azula did not know much about the ceremony given the pressure of time but would come to understand, eventually, why her uncle spent the time with it). She didn't need to, not at first. There was the warmth of tea and the simple thing she didn't understand of acceptance from someone who _knew_ and knew who and what she was and wanted her around.

"I think she likes Zu-Zu," was all she said after she put the cup down for a moment. "I think he likes her, too."

Ty Lee beamed.

"They're kind of cute together."

Azula snorted.

"Maybe, but Zu-Zu has a big soft heart and Mai has a stone face. Hmm..." Her finger brushed her chin. "Maybe that is why she wants to be around him."

Ty Lee laughed, even if she hadn't meant it to be funny and Azula didn't understand, and she smiled dutifully.

She heated Ty Lee's tea and handed it to her as the two just sat and relaxed.

\-------

Himiko worked on her characters, learning the Fire Nation script.

In the past she had learned something of the writing of the Water Tribes, until Fire Lord Azulon had come to her chambers and seen her painstaking work to copy the story that she'd heard from Zuko. He had burned them in front of her with a glower and told her that "We do not honor the works of savages in this place." She had never copied those stories in that language again, but here, in a private moment, she was defying the man who'd almost killed her with lightning.

She did not like the culture that had left her to the Cold.

This story was not even a thing of the Water Tribes, nor of the Moon (and in later years she would wonder if, given the ties of the Moon to her family if there was some prophetic element here but that was a silly idea and she'd dismissed it). It was a thing her brother had done, when she was in a bed healing from the lightning. Zuko's heart was big, said Zula, with more than a faint hint of scorn. To be fair she did understand that. In the House of Azulon and of Ozai a big heart was one that could be blackened to carbonized ruin by lightning. To love was to be vulnerable.

She did not care for the Water Tribes as a people, they had left her to die. The older she got she understood that and had begun to understand what the Cold meant.

She was certain if the family she came from knew of her existence, that they did not care.

That did not matter. She had her family now, and it would be one of the few things that would link her to the Water Tribes, in time to come, that a story read to her by her brother would hang on scrolls in her room.

The story of the Moon, and the fish-spirit that could at times be seen in the Northern Water Tribe's lands when the boundaries between the worlds grew thin.

Of the spirit becoming a maiden and being romanced by Sedna, and then spurning Sedna and returning to the skies, to renew those ties when the spirit walked on the world beneath.

A story of complexities and of sorrows, but with a raw beauty to it.

None of that, nor the subtleties in the original language lost in the Fire Nation's characters mattered.

Himiko was proud of completing it, and prouder still that even if her grandfather knew which tale it was, she'd learned of that tale from her brother, and when she'd explained it he'd accepted it. A singular time to defy him that worked.

\------

Crown Princess Hino worked on her own letter with a quietness, a look of love and sorrow intermixed as her brush formed the characters slowly and lovingly. She had written a long one, five pages, for there she could pour out her heart to the man she loved and had brought out of the shadows she'd seen fully. She told him of that, and of the fears in it, of what it meant, and how proud she was of him and of Lu Ten for growing past that. Of the guilt that had gnawed at her then and later. She did not write that she'd seen then that of all the people to have scored a point on her that it was Ozai who had done so, and that whatever else he was, he was not wrong to have done so.

She had spoken to him of things of the heart, of the contentment of knowing that her husband was a man with a heart, and that whatever else destiny held, he would not lose that.

She wrote the last characters on the last page, with that same careful delicacy.

_My beloved, it has been almost a year already since the Siege of Ba Sing Se has begun. Your nieces and nephews are growing, and I know that Lu Ten is making all of us proud in his service with you._

_It has been a long road since you've gone to the war and too infrequent has it been since you have been here. It was lovely beyond words to have you here in that last visit, for to be around you is a gift beyond measure. I worry that your brother, Prince Ozai, has schemes. At best, he aims to do something that in most contexts would be unspeakable but you know of what we have discussed on this. If it were that alone I could ignore it._

_A year, beloved. A year since that city was ringed and still it holds out. I know the call of destiny lingers, beloved. You are a man and a Crown Prince beneath all that and I would not see my beloved volcanic husband subsumed beneath the destined conqueror of Ba Sing Se. Capture the city, love....and then come home. Our people need you. The world needs you._

Hino put the letter aside and then brushed her face with a deep sigh. There were few burdens heavier than having your beloved go to war and having to wait on the course of time and of time's fell hand.


	9. "The Deep waters are now closed over us."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On a fateful day in the Siege of Ba Sing Se, history reaches a turning point.....and then fails to turn.

_The Spirit World, dawn of the six hundred and third day of the Siege of Ba Sing Se:_

The Goddess Agni, who in the time of absence of the Avatar had grown great and seen her power wax and wax as the world was dyed in blood and burned and burned and burned could not be seen by any of the children of mortal spheres. More precisely she willed herself not to be seen. It was dawn, the bombardments of Ba Sing Se continuing. Six hundred and three days, and the second set of walls had fallen, the third cracking. She strode among the battlefields unleashed since the great rite in her name at Xijing, where they had called upon her, she had answered, and in her blessing they had run rampant. She had answered but she had not made them unleash what they did. Fear, avarice, calculation. The foolish belief that terror would serve as a substitute for anything but hate and the desire to continue a war for eternity.

Her stride was that of a giant and she brushed around the vast ring. The Fire Nation had stripped a few areas it had once occupied with an iron fist bare, unasked for by the Dragon of the West, or by Lu Ten. It was the decisive victory of the war that loomed and Azulon would not have generals and forces say that they had missed it. Rubble marked with spots of black dried blood that had faded and left it a sickly appearance dotted elements of the battlefield. Bleached bones and the charnel stench of death remained, too. War meant fighting, fighting meant killing.

She was Agni, the Undying Flame, Goddess of Unity and of Domination, and she gloried in what she saw. In the ways that the bones of the soon to be victors and the soon to be vanquished were indistinguishable. In the dawn chorus of lightning that rippled outward, and the rumbling of the Fire Nation's chant of the name of the Dragon of the West, he whom she called the Son of Fire. In the shouts of defiance, hoarse and raw and with a cracked tone to their voices from the children of Earth. No fatness in Ba Sing Se now, for there was not enough food and the shadow of despair lurked in the city.

The Earth Kingdom's gods, it was believed, had abandoned it.

She had seen Wu Kong, in whose name they had invoked desperation for a line that had held until the Dragon of the West shattered it with his usual skill standing on the battlements the previous night beneath a full moon. He had become a giant, as the legends said, and he hammered his chest and roared defiance. The look in his eyes was unmistakable. Ba Sing Se would never fall, destiny be damned. No army would take it.

She had glared at him in turn from the lines around the city and for a moment her shining form as the entity of Fire wavered and a second face of hers shone with starlight that seemed almost diseased and decayed, and Wu Kong had seemed troubled. She had laughed then, as the Fire Nation's siege engines had at last made contact with the wall in a way that no amount of grand heroism worthy of a Kyoshi or a Toyotomi, the last Firebender Avatar before Roku, could have broken. 

It was a day of destiny. Ozai, the scheming spider-prince, was planning something in her name. Vengeance in a purely petty sense, the scheme of a crowned criminal, not one of what he fancied it to be. He wanted her to offer him a throne or a great war and a set of campaigns. He was for all the second prince and she was a Goddess of Kings and Fire Lords.

The Dragon of the West stirred and his son the Golden Prince with him. A day of destiny, and soon would come the hour.

\--------

_Fire Nation Palace:_

On that day that would come to have such great meaning for them all, their grandfather did not come for them. Himiko and Azula were at the Academy, where the day had not been one of Himiko's favorites. She had heard the term "Mudskin" enough that she was more than sorely tempted to experiment with a technique she'd learned, and as the Full Moon was visible in the morning sky she could do it even by daylight. Her family welcomed her as one of their own. Even Papa Ozai had, by degrees and she had some reason to believe, even if in the partial sense that a child of eight would understand it, because of grandfather and his own lessons. 

After the quiet use of a tendril of water to trip one person who called her a primitive snow savage, none used that term to her face. She didn't care what they said about her behind her back, or what they thought of her. Grandfather's arrogance aside nothing could make the human heart less a thing of malice. That was how he would have put it, how she would put it in later years when she would see for herself the great war that great-grandfather Sozin had unleashed in the raw and discover what war truly was. Then she just didn't care if they were mean to her in their head as long as they didn't tell her it.

Grandfather did not come, and she was surprised that Zula, of all people, who had waited with a strange tension on her face and her body stiff with a fear all too vivid (and she was the one who'd been nearly killed by lightning but she didn't care, anymore. Grandfather had shown her the ways of civilization. Outward refinement but if the mask slipped, horror to match any of the fearsome stories of Koh the Face-Killer. Or the more shadowy rumors of Agni the Undying Flame of Judgment). When he did not come she heard the kind of nervous warbling laugh she would hear on another day in a very different kind of context, and then she saw Zula's two friends. Mai and Ty Lee.

Mai saw her and nodded, the stone face moving with the only sign that that face lived. She didn't know how a girl that age had such a remarkable absence of emotions matching only that of Papa Ozai, but it disturbed her enough that she made no real efforts to connect to Mai, nor did she want to. She'd seen what Papa Ozai hid behind such a face, she did not want to know what a noble girl of the Fire Nation her own age could hide. Zula never walked around stiff or with the little tells of fear around her but then they'd all gained practice in hiding it....except Prince Zuko, who was convinced that their father's kindness to him meant that Ozai was warming up to him.

Ty Lee was much more exuberantly happy, shouting Zula's name and then pulling her into a hug that Zula returned now with a much more genuine warmth, no longer afraid that if someone hugged her it was an excuse to burn her, at least if it was not Papa Ozai. She went with them.

Himiko could have resented the loneliness she felt at these moments. Aside from her brother and sister she seemed too different to make many friends.

Then she heard a shy voice saying "Princess Himiko?"

She turned to see a girl with Mai-style hair. She had never understood the meatball-bun or what it meant, but this girl had a similar hairstyle, save that her buns were somewhat larger and her hair somewhat looser. 

Strange name this one had, too. It meant, of all things, Rabbit. Why someone would name a bastard granddaughter of Sozin after an animal her snow-savage relatives would have eaten and considered a delicacy puzzled her but it was not something she questioned.

She smiled, then, and took Usaki's arm in hers and the two went off to Usaki's house, where she listened to Usaki's hyperactive descriptions of things. It was entertaining, and it was the first time she'd begun to grasp why Zula liked having Mai and Ty Lee around.

\------

_Fire Nation Training Grounds, a few hours later:_

Zuko had gained more complexity with his Firebending, the most that he would gain until his uncle would become his mentor in a very different way. He wielded not one but two fire blades, showing an aptitude for bladework that impressed Ozai genuinely. Even in the later years when Ozai's true nature became apparent, and his true view of his son likewise, he respected that Zuko with a blade in his hand, of metal or of fire, was a worthy son of his legacy. It was one of the few times he'd questioned his views that bending was the cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems. 

He clapped his hands, twice, a display of approval from him worth a great deal more from less restrained people who could express what he could not.

Zuko dispelled the fires and smiled. His father was happy with him and that was all that mattered. Then he saw a messenger-bird, a hawk, landing on his father's shoulder and his father took the message and his face turned pale and for a single moment what seemed to be his attempt at worry and even sorrow crossed his face. 

"Father?" He asked hesitantly.

Ozai said nothing and stormed out, the paper flitting in front of him and Zuko picked it up, and then he read it and the words seemed to blur.

" _Ill news from the Siege of Ba Sing Se. The Crown Prince and the Golden Prince have fallen."_

\--------

_Siege of Ba Sing Se, six hours earlier:_

"Forgive me father, but I cannot see the sense in both of us being present at this part of the battlefield. We have fought for six hundred and two days of a siege where we have not taken this risk. Shouldn't we keep that practice, even today?" 

Crown Prince Iroh shook his head. "No, my son. Ba Sing Se will fall, today. It has been as much your labor as mine, as you have grown as a man and as a soldier. I want you here, to see what price victory can have. This is the world we've made, son."

There was a melancholy element in his voice and Lu Ten's eyes widened slightly as he heard it. "This is the world we've made. Nothing so melancholy as a battle won."

His father had a sense of gloom that had grown with him as the Siege had intensified and the hours of victory drew near. Earlier Lu Ten had believed it to be sorrow that the war would be coming to an end, that the soldiers would go home and the time of the Dragon of the West would vanish and Fire Lord Iroh's dawn.

Over time he had come to see it very differently when Crown Prince Iroh did something he had never thought to do until after he'd seen his father doing it. He walked among the wounded after the various smaller battles, speaking to them. They were proud to see the Crown Prince, and in many ways humbled. He did not know if Azulon or Sozin had ever done this (and he would never find out the answer in life, though the answer was no, for the Fire Lords in times past had viewed the nature of their war as glory and those whose bodies were broken and ruined by its cost immaterial).

Seeing them writhing with burns or broken bones and limbs, seeing them with the aftereffects of heroism like bandages swathing an eye or missing a hand it at last brought home to him what was in his father's mind. Six hundred and two days of raw exposure to war and war's horrors, to the smaller and the greater elements of same, had brought home the fell truths that lurked within the elements they took for granted. So too had the desperate heroism of the Earth Kingdom. The old line that he had started out believing (though only now, too late to wield it in life, did he begin to wonder if his father had ever done so in the time they'd served together) that its armies held together from mass and the stolid courage of peasants too stupid to question the directions of their generals.

Even the most truly indoctrinated had seen the Earth Kingdom and its Earthbenders fighting with a courage and a tenacity that belied this. They fought the greatest general in a hundred years of war with the largest armies the Fire Nation would ever wield in war. They had fought for almost two years, and still their armies held. It was the first time that any great number of Fire Nationals and their soldiers began to question the stories they were taught for a century.

The Avatar had been gone for ninety-four years. He would not rise again for another six, but before his time to rise, the Fire Nation, some small part of it, had already begun to grasp truths that in the end would help as much as any with the consequences of his return.

Now, with that understanding, Lu Ten listened to the sorrow in his father's voice and both went to the eastern gate of Ba Sing Se, what would have been the gate to the Forbidden City where the Earth Kings made their home. Beneath it the waters of Lake Laogai and the ill-starred chambers of the Dai Li. Here, the Fire Nation had brought their greatest portion of their forces and their most veteran armies. One great crack, and then the walls would come tumbling down. One last offensive, and the war would be if not won within a shouting distance of being so.

The fighting after this would be breaking the detritus of a broken kingdom. Even if the Northern Water Tribe (and by now it was fully confirmed and the story known) had managed to bait Admiral Zhao into a terrible battle beneath the Full Moon where they had conjured terrible power from the ocean and drowned the fleet, after an earlier naval skirmish that had proven less decisive than it had seemed) it would fall beneath the weight of the full power of its armies. The Southern? It had but two waterbenders of note left. The Bloodbender-Witch....and Princess Himiko, now a loyal daughter of the Fire Nation.

Short of the miraculous return from the grave of the Avatar, nothing would be left.

The preparations had been made and the soldiers surged forward with a will. Lightning rippled, fire streams slammed into stone that was cracking and becoming brittle. The war hung on a knife's edge. Beneath the eyes of the Dragon of the West and the Golden Prince the battle went on, the Earth Kingdom's rangier and hardier soldiers, for none who still fought now was not, fought with a desperate ferocity and yet in a trial of strength as siege engines and the new experimental drills and armored vehicles that spat lightning in caged fashions conjured by Firebenders.

\-------

_Fire Nation Palace, at the time Ozai stormed out of the training room:_

Hino went to the flames, her body controlled because if it did not she would begin to breathe fire like her husband, but without his control. She would do so wailing and weeping and marked by fear. She went to the flames and she knelt. Her descent from Avatar Kyoshi's son, which Ozai had told her, explained much (she knew that Kyoshi had had a wife, and was fonder of women. How such a woman had ever had children was lost to history but it did not mean anything, not now). The fires crackled and she willed herself to _see_ as she could. 

In the flames she saw _something_ in the spirit world where her husband was, something vast and monstrous, a colossus whose very essence was steeped in blood and red slaughter.

Her eyes blazed with an almost tangible light for a moment and she willed herself to strengthen Iroh in a dark night of the soul that was far more literal than otherwise.

\-------

_Ozai and Ursa's room:_

Himiko, Azula, and Zuko were all in a room. None of them had truly been together like this since Himiko had been struck by grandfather's likeness. None of them knew what to say and so they said nothing. 

Papa Ozai had brought them here, his face pale and his eye twitching slightly, something like tears there. They had never seen this, and they did not understand it and they would not for a long time. Even when they heard that other news.

They sat together, Himiko in a lotus position meditating, Zuko fidgeting. Azula looking at her fingers and cleaning ash from under her nails and eyes flickering to the door. It was a day of destiny to the adults but to them it was boring hours in a room, older memories overwritten by newer realities.

\---------

_Ozai's Chambers:_

"I thought you'd be happier," was all Ursa let herself say to Ozai. 

Ozai shook his head. "If I gained the throne I would not want it like this. Not with my brother dead, my nation disgraced by defeat. I.....I feel...."

And she saw him for a moment as someone vulnerable, even weak. She realized he wanted to love and to grieve for Iroh and even Lu Ten, but she understood instinctively that the sickness in him meant he did not know how, that to a point he could not. She rested her head on his shoulder and put her arms around him.

\-------

_The Gate of the Forbidden City, four hours earlier:_

The gate creaked and it began to break, the stone brittle and exploding in shards of shrapnel. Even the cries of pain from the Fire Nation soldiers had an exultant edge and the Golden Prince moved with his father, the Dragon of the West, to the decisive point, both preparing to fight. As soon as the explosive charges prepared went off (and there were orders for the troops to withdraw for a moment and to give the Earth Kingdom the belief that their sacrifices would hold), it would be the end of the beginning. 

In the realm of spirits, a towering thing moved on a gilded throne, watching as Ba Sing Se reached the point of decision where the city would fall, or it would hold. Starlight-eyes shone with the fires that made Agni who and what she was, and then she moved from her throne and raised her hands as a conductor would before an ochestra.

**_Now comes the day and the hour when destiny strikes_ **

**_Now comes the point where mortal men shall know why they fear the night._ **

**_Come hear you nations to hear and heed you peoples, For now in fire's eyes, mortals shall burn bright_ **

With her words at the Siege of Ba Sing Se, on a cloudless day lit by a bright sun, a section of the gate suddenly erupted when a vast column of flame seemed to materialize from nowhere. The flame struck explosives being prepared for the next breach of the walls. In the eruption of that light and fire, Lu Ten was hurled bodily into the skies and Iroh with him. The son lived, though he knew for a moment the curious absence of pain in severe injury. Crown Prince Iroh struck his head. The battlefield became eerily silent and his people stared in horror at the thought that the Dragon of the West had fallen before them, stiff and unmoving.

The Siege paused, for a few hours, in an unanticipated truce.

The shadow of Xijing loomed and the Earth Kingdom knew all too well that its legacy had never truly vanished.

\------

Lu Ten did scream, finally, when the pain of his shattered arm and leg hit, and then the scream stilled when he felt an energy-director kneeling beside him, willing his body to become numb. Ribs were cracked too, so breathing hurt, but he rasped:

"Father, is he alive?"

The healer said nothing. 

Lu Ten's voice cracked.

"is my father alive?"

He saw other energy-directors moving to a body, in Fire Nation royal robes, that lay stiff and unmoving, blood trickling from a head wound.

He cursed his wounds as he could not rise to go to his side.

"Father!" He shouted and then his own wounds and numbness overwhelmed him and he slipped into a dreamless kind of sleeping-state.

\--------

_The Spirit World:_

It was the first time in his life, and in this phase of who and what he was, the last, that Crown Prince Iroh would enter the spirit world. Iroh of the Fire Nation would in later years in a humbler self-perception, and in a different view of the world but that was later. Now, he found himself in a place of surpassing gloom with eerie howls in the wind. For a moment he saw a shadow of something dark and monstrous, neither beast nor man, wielding a great staff. It looked at him and seemed to almost want to speak with a warning and then light shone. 

A being walked toward him clad in brilliant gold, her eyes warm and like the rays of Himiko, the name that they had given the Sun.

 _ **Son of Fire,**_ he heard a being speak with two voices. One a roiling thunderclap of the kind he expected from a God's voice. The other surprisingly human, with an accent that he could not quite place. Guttural in parts, strange shading on syllables in another. Human-like but no language of humanity he had ever heard. But then this was a Goddess, why would she talk as men talked?

 _ **Son of Fire,**_ the being repeated. _ **I am Agni, the Undying Flame. She in whose name your people have made great sacrifices. I am the spirit of your war, and of the Fire Nation's destiny. I have come to bargain.** _


	10. Thread of the Fates:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crown Prince Iroh makes a fateful decision that alters his life and that of the Fire Nation. 
> 
> The War reaches a turning point, and it turns.

_The Spirit World:_

_**Iroh,son of Fire.** _

The twin voices echoed, one low and soft, with a human intonation to it that he did not recognize. It was melodic with guttural aspects, a voice seductive in its nature. The other was a thunderstorm of raging fury, more a psychic shriek than a voice and he felt the agony in his soul in its sound and in the nature of what could speak such words. The colossus moved toward him in two steps and then it was there, looming with arms spread wide. Two gauntlets that gleamed with unlight that flowed down like veins, a hue of many colors that sickened the air around it.

_**You are a son of my people, pledged to me and to my kind. Your father swore a bargain, and of that bargain his price was Xijing. I offer you a bargain in turn.** _

_**To gain power, and glory, and a throne that shall see your name live for all time, all that it requires....is the skulls of the inhabitants of Ba Sing Se. From its palaces to the mind-altering chambers beneath Lake Laogai.** _

_**Ask of me and I shall give you the nations for your inheritance, the world for your possession. Mine the hands that kill, mine the hands that take ashes and reforge it into gold and into eternity.** _

_**So tell me, son of Fire. Your flesh is unconscious and needs neither food nor water, so I am in no rush for your answer. Tell me, son of Fire. Shall you gain a world and kneel before the Undying Flame, the Agni by whose will your kind burn the unworthy? Or will you choose the weak path, spurn glory, and learn the price of defying a God's will?** _

For a time in an interminably long span of existence, which he did not know as time in the spirit world did not pass as it did in the world of men, Iroh stared in mute shock. This was the thing that his father had offered Xijing to and in that moment he believed in the full truth of what his father had told him and Ozai in that drunken ramble. This was Power, this was Conquest. This was what had created the horrors he'd seen. The horrors he realized with a sudden sorrow and a deep shock that he was a part of it. The blood was on his hands. And of his entire people.

 _This_ was them reflected in the Spirit World. Gold and refinement that hid beneath it barbarism and savagery far worse than anything that the Water Tribes could have ever imagined even if they lived up to the truth. _This_ was war in its rawest shape. Cruelty unrefined, squalid hatred and malice. He felt Hino's warmth then, as if her fingers reached out to him and clasped his hands. That warmth greeted him.

Beyond the spirit world the unintended truce would lapse the rest of the day, both armies frozen by indecision. The Fire Nation generals were in a state of existential panic as daylight slipped into dark and a waning moon still bloated with its light would rise. The Golden Prince and the Crown Prince had fallen. Azulon would have their heads for this.

It was that moment, as daylight began to slip into dark that the order was given. Neither Lu Ten nor Iroh gave it, though in later years a myth would arise that the Dragon of the West had seen his son's death after his own injury and given the order. It was not in truth the kind of order that would have been given or obeyed otherwise. It was a collective decision by a council of war fearful that if its generals died and generals of the Royal blood at that, that the Fire Lord would kill them without a second thought or a hesitation. The Earth Kingdom made no effort to pursue the forces that retreated, first from the gates around the Forbidden City, and then gradually from Ba Sing Se itself.

They had seen that the Dragon of the West did not retreat and six hundred and three days of familiarity with his way of war meant that they did not dare trust that he had truly withdrawn. They could know that his soul was in the Spirit World, his body not breathing nor moving. That those around him who could move wept, that the Fire Nation had chosen by a sudden fluke of circumstance to retreat, that the Crown Prince, if he did die, could not be said to have been killed by incompetence or worse scheming that could be attributed to Prince Ozai or some other, lesser force.

\------

Iroh did not know this, all he knew was that he felt his wife's love and the painful nature of their absence.

Then he saw something _else._

For a moment the Goddess Agni's mask slipped and Iroh saw what lay beneath.

The world was smaller than he realized. A pebble in an infinite thing neither ocean nor eternity, but vast and uncaring. It orbited a vast ball of flame that was spectacular and wondrous....and one of infinite others. And beyond it were other universes like it, every single one as vast, full of planets as this. And beyond them was Agni, in a form great and terrible, a colossus of Hunger and Domination, of War's red slaughter, whose shining fangs and sunfire eyes promised great things if only he would yield. Facing the utter insignificance of humanity and the understanding at the level he could of just what had come among pantheons and had arisen and blighted his people and his world with its attentions. No, not its attentions. Its indifference. For some reason that made him feel worse. 

Iroh, who had fallen to his knees at this sight, heard what seemed to be Hino's voice whispering encouragement and then he raised himself to his feet. For a moment his eyes shone himself and his hair became as flames, his skin gleaming with an eerie light.

"I am Iroh, son of Azulon, son of Sozin! A prince of a noble people, who have fallen into evil! I shall not sell my soul to some Devil, for I have learned of the ashes you left behind in Xijing! No God that offers such things is worth following!"

Still he saw the giant and infinity gazing, and it seemed that it did not hear him and it dawned on him then. It truly _was_ indifferent, Agni. In the eyes of one to whom all those stars were as nothing, what was one world, one man? Still he glared and then the creature lunged and those around him saw his body physically lifted up into the air. The energy-directors stared in horror and Lu Ten's cracked voice shouted his name and "Father" in a sense of fear. _Something_ seemed to intrude into the material world then, a great shadow that creaked at lines between the spirit and material worlds. Ninety-four years of the Avatar's absence had thrown things into great disarray. The irreligious views of the Fire Nation cracked then in a way that would never return. 

**I** _**will show you the price for daring to defy your superior, maggot. Xijing burned as a worthy sacrifice, an offering by fire pleasing to me. You have spurned me, so your world shall know what it is to have a son of my will in power. Now, Iroh, of Fire, it is not you who have lit a fire on the Earth. It is I, and it is kindled. The axe is at the root of the trees, and all shall perish.** _

Iroh awoke in a startled gasping sound, the weight of something heavy around his throat and for a moment at night even the Earth Kingdom's peasants beheld a great shadow that eclipsed the moon, and seemed to glimpse something that stared with starlight-eyes and a sense of overpowering hunger and thirst for blood and skulls intruded. There was a smile, vaguely human, with sharp white teeth that were fangs that did not belong in a human jaw, and laughter in twin voices. 

For a moment the stars glowed with sickly deadened light, green and brown and sterile things that were horrifying to gaze upon. 

The Earth Kingdom did not contest the withdrawal of the Fire Nation armies, and it would be years before armies again returned to Ba Sing Se in force. The Night of Dead Stars, it was called, and it was seen as a harbinger of the Avatar's return only in retrospect.

Then it was the note on which the Fire Nation Army's retreat from Ba Sing Se, which Iroh learned about the next day, occurred. Dead stars, a shadow on the moon that blocked it and turned it blood-red.

\------

Iroh painfully got up and went to his son's side. The retreat was done, he could not have undone it swiftly, and Ba Sing Se had held. He had not been defeated, technically. Something from the Spirit World had intervened and thwarted the Fire Nation's victory even as it had promised him a total triumph. The lesson was not lost on him, and it would not be for the duration. His head throbbed but he could see. And his son, who was hurting, smiled at him weeping as he held him in turn.

"You're alive," was what Lu Ten said. He held his son, then.

A soft thunderclap like malevolent laughter under the dead stars echoed and neither quite heard it, nor did they see something like a golden-fire-centipede slip into Lu Ten's ear.

The retreat went from Ba Sing Se to the Fire Nation's colonies, a matter of a week. Iroh did not care, he spent time at his son's side as a terrible fever wracked him. The best arts of medicine and healing (disciplines learned, at that, and modified from aspects of what Princess Himiko's statements had taught them) could do nothing. His son was feverish and raved in delirium.

He was by his son's side every day, holding his hand, attending to him as much as he could himself.

They had arrived at the outermost colony in the north, when his son at last sat up, for a moment. He'd lost weight and he was thin, and he rasped:

"Let us cross over the river, and rest beneath the shade of the trees."

And then he never spoke again.

Iroh wept then, broken as a man, for he had seen the terrors unleashed by the war he'd done so much to wage in the Spirit World. There was no Avatar, anymore. No more hope. Only a time of slaughter and carnage and the laughter of spirits as fell as the Lord of Chaos, Vaku, in the shadowy times of the First Avatar. Vaku was not alone in that nature, why would he have been? How could a spirit worth following animate his people to do what they had done? How could it spare his life and lead to him....

In a cemetery on the outskirts of the Fire Nation colony of Osaka, Iroh stood with his generals. He watched as the dirt fell on his son's coffin and he heard the sounds of the war and of his son's laughter, of all the love and hope that was dead as his heart was left now only to one. His wife. What could he tell her? How could he face her again knowing he had failed, he had failed to bring their son home to them?

His voice was choked in tears as he rasped: "No parent should ever have to bury their child."

And he realized then with that further enormity just how many on all sides of the war had done this. In a cruel sense, Sozin had been merciful to the Airbenders. None of them lived, so no parents nor children had to bury anyone. They were united in the embrace of death, of Yaoma Grave-King.

Lu Ten was dead.

Lu Ten was dead, and he lived.

\------

_Fire Nation Palace, Hino's Chambers:_

Hino had seen this in the fires, too, and she stared numb. 

Numb. She wanted to weep but the sheer aching emptiness of everything, the hole in her heart, from her husband's absence and that he buried their son alone.....

She had seen and even _felt_ part of his emotions. She could not blame him for their son dying as he had lived, a hero on the battlefield. She would not. If there was anger it would be for Azulon and later for Ozai.

For now she held herself, as the numbness faded and she keened and wailed. She held herself because Iroh was not there, and when he would be there, she would hold him and she would be free to wail with him, and to let grief know its time.

Her son was dead, her family would never shape the future of the Fire Nation. If she were like Ozai that would have been on her mind first and foremost but she and Iroh were not. They grieved for their child, for the understanding that their lives were in ashes, and all that was left to them now was each other.

\-------

_Azulon's chambers:_

Azula had learned of her cousin's death and felt something strange. Salt in her mouth, warmth on her face. She wiped it off and made a point to keep her face still. Even for this, Father would burn her. Himiko was around them again, he could and he would and she would not allow it. 

But when she saw him learning the news of Lu Ten's fate, and the way his face _changed_ she took a decision that she should not have, one that she would repeat again a week later with still more dire results.

She followed her father to where she could overhear and watch his speaking to a grandfather whose face was reddened from his drinks.

She had never seen grandfather like _this._

"Father," her father's voice was strange. There were tones in it she would never hear again. "I know there is grief, here, but my brother's son is dead. Our nation's succession is at risk. We must decide. I don't want the throne, Father, but I have three children who could inherit the power of the throne. Whatever happens with Iroh, the fate of the Fire Nation is in my hands and that of my family." 

Azulon rose from his throne with a face of wrath.

"You would _dare_ come to me with this _now?_ Hino was right, you are Ozai Flintheart. Your nephew is dead and all you can think about is a _throne?_ They are not tools, Ozai, they never have been. You and Iroh were never them either. I see that, now. i see my mistakes. I wanted weapons, and I treated my own flesh and blood as if you were blades, of metal or of firebending."

He sighed. "Ozai, you cannot understand pain, and you never will. I would like to think even if I ordered you to kill your son," Azula placed a hand over her mouth to gasp, and then she ran. She did not hear how the statement ended, "that you would still not understand. But I will not do this. I will decide on the succession, Ozai Lackland. But not here, not now. I wish to drink, to grieve. You might be too empty a soul to understand grief, my monster-son, but I am not. Get thee gone from my SIGHT!" 

Ozai bowed. Azulon saw what was strange, an expression half-formed and eyes dark with tears and for a moment he wondered. Did his son truly have a heart and emotions? Was it that he could not truly feel them, only shadows, and that this shaped him? It meant nothing.

The Fire Nation's fate was sealed. He would see Ozai before Yaoma's throne before allowing him to be Fire Lord all the same. If he did decide, it would be thus. Iroh, succeeded by Zuko. Never would 'Fire Lord Ozai' be words any would say.

He drank more deeply of the hard liquor and he placed his hand on his arm and he wept. He thought of Ozai as a monster but what was he? What had he done at Xijing? What had he done to his family to risk the lives of his son and his grandson? Iroh lived. By whatever fluke of circumstances. He wanted badly to have his son to speak to, to give him an old man's valediction. No atonement for Azulon, in the end, not as there was for his father.

He was damned, damned to the harshest corners of Yaoma's sphere, and that weight broke him in the end.

\--------

_Zuko's bedroom:_

For a time Zuko believed this night to be one of the harshest proofs of the old rule that 'Azula always lies'. She had crept into his bedroom trembling, her voice slightly cracked. 

"Father's going to kill you, Zuzu,". Those words woke him up bluntly.

"W-What?"

"He spoke to grandfather about the throne. Grandfather said that he should learn what it was to lose a son. So he told father to kill you."

Zula's voice was emotionless, this time, even if shadows lurked behind her eyes. She squeezed his shoulder with something like affection.

"I'm sorry, Zuzu. We're all monsters, in the end, except you. So of course grandfather would."

Then she was gone, and it seemed a nightmare.

\--------

_Ozai and Ursa's chamber:_

"He said what?" Ursa froze. 

"He wants me to kill our son, Ursa. He wants me to kill our son, so that I can know my brother's pain. Not enough for him to massacre a city and kill three hundred thousand and stand in pride in a charnel house he made before he razed it and renamed it after himself! Not enough for him to work my brother and I nearly to death and to do so to Azula and Himiko! Now he wants our SON!"

Ozai's wrath was terrifying to behold.

Ursa's face was frozen for a moment, then it became a look of determination that left Ozai experiencing an electric chill crawling up his spine.

"What are we going to do then, my husband?"

Ozai smiled a reptilian grin. "We're going to kill my father. A monster's death for a monster."

Ursa could have said no, then, but this was her Zuko, her son. The son she'd done so much to shape and whom for a time even Ozai seemed to appreciate his true nature.

Her face was determined as she nodded.

"All right, then. We will kill Azulon. For Zuko."

There was a moment of silence, then Ozai nodded. "Yes.....for Zuko."


	11. "The stars in their courses, they fought against Sisera."

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the wake of defeat at Ba Sing Se, the Fire Nation is rocked by a second and a third tragedy. The Fire Lord is slain and a Waterbender terrorist loosed by the secretive and shadowy White Lotus Society has nearly slain the youngest princess of the royal family, a bender of her own type, no less. So say the official narratives of newly crowned Fire Lord Ozai.

_Azulon's Bedchamber:_

It was the night and the day that would forge the world from ashes into a sickly molten gold. It was the night that would change the Fire Nation royal family. Nighttime had just barely begun to fall when Princess Azula had crept into her brother's bedroom to warn him of Azulon's warning. She remained outside his door, intending to keep watch that night and to protect her older brother. Her older brother with the heart, the only one of the three of them who was not a monster. She remained awake for the first couple of hours and she did not miss that her parents stole out past her.

Ozai and Ursa for their part saw Azula, and for a moment Ozai almost froze. Azula, in front of her brother's bedroom? A child of ten wanting to protect a child of eleven? Had she forgotten the lessons he, and here if nowhere else he did agree with his soon to be late father, had taught her? Was she capable of that weakness called _love?_ No matter. When he was Fire Lord he would burn and lightning-blast that weakness straight out of her if he had to. His daughter would not be marred as his brother and his son were. Neither of his daughters would be.

There had been a plan cooked up over years, and he had almost brought it to fruition when Ursa had pre-empted it. Footsteps in the night, and now they were in Azulon's bedchamber. The old Fire Lord slept in a disorganized and rude-looking fashion, brought to a very heavy slumber by the sheer quantity of alcohol he'd consumed, the sour smell of vomit in the room as a sign, too, of that same reality. Both of their noses wrinkled. Azulon had always had a predisposition to drink in crisis, though both Iroh and he had vowed to abstain lest they too turn into raging monsters under the influence.

Ozai had imbibed deeply of his father's teachings and his own....differences...made it easier. Others wept, others knew what it was to love and to connect to people as human beings. Others could love and be loved. To Ozai these were phantoms incomprehensible in nature and a weakness to be scorned and to be treated with the utmost contempt. He believed himself strong, and that strength was a thing of decisive action and that decisive action often meant the most deadly and lethal things that humans could do. Now he stared at an old man sleeping and he snarled, silently, preparing to call upon his full strength.

Then it occurred to him that even if Azulon was drunk, even if he'd dismissed his guards and they had for whatever reason chosen to obey that dismissal, that so much could go wrong here. That this old man deep in his sleep was someone who if anything went slightly wrong would kill them both and it would not be a clean death or a kind one. He'd heard the screams of the interrogations Azulon presided over even deep into his sleep. Ozai believed that killing was easy and that even indoctrination to do it could be easy. And yet his hands trembled. And yet, on this night of nights that hinged his fate, that of his nation, and that of the war begun by his grandfather and vastly expanded by his father, his powers for the only time in his life _failed._ As if he was _Zuko._ He could not so much as summon a single puff of flame.

Ursa looked at him with skepticism first, then worry, then anger. An eyebrow raised, a face paling and a jaw moving slightly, then her brows furrowing thunderously.

"Incredible," she hissed. "The one time you could truly be Ozai Flintheart and you decide to remember you've never actually killed someone and act like it."

Ozai kept trying to make his power work, only for Ursa to pinch her nose heavily, and sigh. Ozai had known that Ursa was a Firebender but they had seldom practiced together and he had forgotten just how _powerful_ she was. If she'd put the kind of effort into that he and Iroh did, he realized at the sheer smell of ozone in the air and the way his hands stood on end that she could have easily been his equal. Perhaps even his _superior._ For just a moment he saw her as his _father_ did and then that realization produced in him the only time he'd feel anything like horror, before Ursa knelt beside Fire Lord Azulon and placed her hand to his head.

A brilliant flash of light.

\-----

_Zuko's bedroom:_

The princess who had fallen asleep outside her brother's bedroom awoke with her hand clamped over her mouth to muffle the cry. Her brother did too. There was a light, strange in its nature and a sound of thunder. Not the laughter-like thunder from their father's room that had given all three of them sleepless nights. Thunder, like the aftermath of _lightning-bending._ Azula wanted to run into that room to protect her brother, but did not, after reaching for the door twice to move it open. Her brother meant something. His heart, now the last in their family after Lu Ten, could not be allowed to be squandered.

\-------

_Fire Lord Azulon's chamber:_

The bed did not burn, so they had that mercy but Ozai stared in mute horror as Ursa raised her hand and the cauterized wound of the severed head of his father, cut off like a common criminal's, was there as it rolled off the bed.

Ozai stared at his hands and then, as he took a deep breath, he turned to Ursa.

"Ursa," his voice was strained in a way that made her immediately cautious. "You never wanted to be married to me, did you?" She shook her head. Now, now that her hands were stained with the aftermath of regicide, no more secrets.

Ozai's next words stunned her and took her breath away. "Take that cook, your first husband, with you and flee this night. You can be with him."

"And the children?"

Ozai's smile was his attempt at kindness but it was an ugly sneer that even then did not reach his eyes.

"They will be safe with me. We did not arrange for my father's death to protect them for me to simply turn around and become worse than he."

Ursa clenched her fists and then there was that same ozone element in the room.

"They are my _children_ Ozai. How can you possibly expect me to abandon them?"

Ozai spread his hands. "Prince Lu Ten is dead. My brother.......is in a state of shock. He is in no position to assume the throne and I do not think he will truly want it. If he does, I would give it to him, but..."

"I have done this to save the succession of the Fire Nation. Zuko will stay here. He is the Crown Prince now, it is his destiny one day to assume the Throne and to govern our people."

Ursa glared. She wanted to argue the point but sensed that it was unwise and she could see the heat shimmer around Ozai's hands as whatever force had restrained him then seemed to fade.

That made her afraid.

"If I can't save my son, Azula and Himiko....you don't need them."

Ozai moved gracefully into a form of Firebending that brought his flames to a brilliant and a terrible heat.

"No. I need the spare as well as the heir, and....." his eyes gleamed. "Himiko becoming our good little Fire National was my idea, Father simply stole the concept from me and even then his implementation of it lagged. Your choice, Ursa. Your husband, or remaining here and becoming as isolated from things as Princess Hino and with far less influence on the next generation."

And then she saw Ozai hone his fires into two blades, holding them at his side as his grin changed and then she caught her first and for a long time _only_ glimpse of what she'd euphemistically called the sickness. Seeing that truth her breath caught and she nodded, and then turned to leave. 

"Be gone by dawn," was all Ozai said, his voice gloating.

\-------

_Zuko's Bedroom:_

Ursa froze when she saw Azula half-asleep at the door. For a moment all her worries about her daughter faded, and she realized then that whatever else made Azula so unlike her (if so curiously like her father) that she did love. She would never be Ozai's daughter, she could not be. Love was not what Ozai said it was, a decadent weakness that made people foolish. Love made a little girl of ten seek to protect a little boy of eleven, against what would have been no contest at all. Love led to her wearing an oversized suit of armor, and even when she was asleep remaining so in a way to block the door.

Ursa knelt beside Azula, who stirred at the warmth of her mother and of her mother's energy, which in the halfway state between sleeping and waking she could _see_ as she could only see then, in all truth.

She heard a whisper, her mother's voice, and then that state faded and she was awake.

"Mom?"

"Azula, I am so very proud of you, and I love you. You are my strong little girl, never forget that."

"M-Mom? What about Grandf-"

Her mother's finger on her lip. "He won't attack Zuko. Or anyone else. He won't work you halfway to death every day, either." Azula wept then, in her mother's arms, in what would be the last she would see or know of Ursa for a very, very long time. "There were....things....that I do not regret, that had to be done. That were done. Because of them, my Azula, I have to leave."

Azula's eyes widened. Things....the idea that Grandfather wouldn't h- "Dad k-" she put her finger to her daughter's lips and there was a strange set of emotions at the idea that her daughter thought that if it came to that it would be her husband and not her capable of killing the old monster if they had to. At some level her daughter could not see her mother doing what she had done.

And then after another kiss and a few quiet words exchanged in the early hours of the night, Ursa picked up Azula, took the armor off, and tucked her into bed for what was a sleepless night, hearing one last time "I love you." Words that would not last and would be forgotten in the times to come as self-hatred and her burdens began to overwhelm her.

\------

_Zuko's bedroom:_

When he heard a noise Zuko awoke trying to form a fire dagger in a half-sleeping state but he could not. His vision consolidated and he saw his mother going to him in the night, a look of worry and sorrow on her face.

"Zuko," she said, her voice low and sorrowful. "You do not have to worry about anything happening with....with him." Then he stiffened. Azula had told him _the truth? "_ There is much here I hope you never have to understand, my son. Look after each other. You and your sisters. Right now, you are all you have." He didn't understand that very well, not then. Father loved him, right? He'd spent the last year with him and it was the best year they'd ever had together.

His mother hugged him and told him she loved him and that "I hope, some day, we will see each other again. In happier circumstances."

She vanished, then. And Zuko too did not sleep that night.

\-------

_Himiko's bedroom:_

Himiko too was awakened, and she heard her mother speak to her with the barbarian name (after a year of Azulon's drilling she had come to accept that the people who left her with the fear of the Cold had done so because they were innately savage. What kept her from being like them was Fire Nation citizenship, coming to know its ways were the best).

"Katara," she said again, and their eyes met. "I have to go. You will hear a story tomorrow, and whatever you hear it will only be a partial truth. You have Zuko to look after you, and please, look after Azula, too. You are good kids, all of you. I love you."

Ursa held her then and she cautiously returned things and then went back to sleep. She had had what seemed to be the strangest dream of her life. 

When she awoke the next morning and rumors came that Fire Lord Azulon was dead she suddenly realized it was not a dream at all.

That was only emphasized further when they witnessed the coronation of Papa Ozai, now Fire Lord Ozai, and saw the rapt look on his face.

From the second son, despised and hated and hateful, he was now master of the entire Fire Nation.

\--------

_Fire Lord's chambers:_

The first steps of things were simple enough. He approved the suggestion of temporary Marshal of the armies Temujin to march on Omashu. Ba Sing Se stood, and its ruler was boasting that his kingdom had held and 'won' the greatest victory of the war in decades for that primitive mass of peasantry.

With a happy afterthought he signed warrants for the first step in what would become known as Ozai's Purge. The generals who'd left his brother in a position where he'd almost died and where Prince Lu Ten did would be arrested and they would become the first people he did kill with his own hands, learning to wield fire daggers with a skill that would become gradually more efficient in time. That would not be for about four days after the warrants were sent and his first few executions would be messy and bloody things that left him glad he'd gone into them bare-chested.

He truly had overestimated how easy it was to kill a man, and it left him much more cautious about Iroh. He had also expected that the now-deposed Crown Princess Hino might have objected to his casually claiming the throne but he had not seen her since.

His father was dead, his wife was now with her first husband, the man she'd truly....loved. Yes, that was the word. Breathing heavily, the mutilated and broken bodies of the generals in front of him, he tapped his chin with a finger. Ah yes, there was one other loose end to tie up. The one that he'd gone through such trouble for a more elaborate means to have his father slain, to have the world changed.

He showered and got himself cleaned off from the blood and gave curt orders for the disposals of the bodies. His servants were then punished by standing out in the cold night for vomiting at the sights of what they saw, and the reputation and aura of fear he'd begun to instill began to work to his advantage. Now, when he gave orders, he knew they would be obeyed.

Then there was the news that followed when his brother Iroh had arrived.

\-------

_Iroh and Hino's chambers:_

Iroh had felt his wife's hugs for many and many a time in the long years of their marriage. He felt them more tightly now and he reciprocated them, both of them weeping. Let Ozai have the throne. 

He had seen what heard the prayers of the royal family, what had become the patron of the Fire Lords at least now in the last century, perhaps before then. He had seen a strange world and he did not know what it was that he had seen. He told his wife what little he'd seen, holding her hand, and telling her quietly "Perhaps, if I....if we....can find that place, if I can just speak to our son again...." Hino nodded. "No more thrones, then?"

Iroh nodded in turn. "No. No more thrones. No more of the war. I know what I saw, Hino. That's what we're feeding with this. This war.....it is a sickness in us all now and we feed the gaping maw of thirsting and hungering gods."

"I saw enough of it, my love, to know what it was that you heard. I agree with you. Maybe the new Fire Lord will be kind enough to leave us in peace. You have knowledge of the Spirit World to gain. I......whatever else happens, Iroh, I will always be by your side. The war separated us for too long. Grief will not separate us further, and love? For now, my love, our love is all we have and what a thing that is."

She put her hand on his cheek and he leaned into it, as she saw the weights holding him down. In tears there were sad smiles, and determination.

A knock on the door and then one of the new Fire Lord's generals was there. Iroh could have seen it as an insult, but then-

"General Ishii, what happened to him?"

The new general, one of the stouter and heavier peoples of the north shrugged. "The Fire Lord disciplined him for what happened to you and your son. I am his replacement, Jaghatai, until now Khagan of the northernmost of the north. Now a general of the Fire Nation. Please, Prince Iroh, Princess Hino, come with me. The Fire Lord wishes to speak to you."

\------

_Ozai's chambers:_

Hino held his hand and remained with him but remained very silent when the brothers had their first moment to speak in the wake of all that had changed.

"Iroh," he looked at his brother as he heard Ozai's voice wavering with a strange note. Father was dead, now, and he had a pretty good suspicion who had contrived the death, had no doubt done it with a smile on his lips. Were it anyone else but their father he would have been much more grieved and angry than he was. Azulon had died by the very blade mantra by which he lived. He said nothing, his eyes looking squarely at Ozai, his mouth tight.

"I.......I am sorry, about Lu Ten. He was a fine boy and he would have been a greater man. How could he have not been? He was like you, he was your son."

Iroh fought with a great deal of success to keep from raising an eyebrow at those words. It was no secret to him from his contacts at the palace that Ozai's true views of his son were....different.

"Ba Sing Se did not fall in the first siege, brother, because of ill fate. You can take it again."

Ah. So that was why Ozai was doing this. Of course it was. Ozai's eyes seemed to almost glow with ambition.

"Agni's blessing shall be upon us brother" (He did not see that Iroh's face became pale and he stiffened at the thought of Agni and that entity 'blessing' anything at all).

"I have sent the current Marshal of the Fire Nation, Temujin, to storm Omashu. You will need time to grieve as people do, brother, and it shall be granted. And when you go to Ba Sing Se again to take it......"

Ozai's gaze was rapturous.

"Well, it will be part of something else that I have planned. Sozin's comet is coming,brother. It will make us all strong, so very strong. And when that day arises, you and I shall go to war together, as you did with Father in the old days. Ba Sing Se will burn, brother. Anywhere in that barbarian kingdom that has not fallen to our arms will burn. They will _all_ burn."

He did not see the look that crossed the faces of Iroh and Hino, nor the way the two reacted to that assertion. All he could imagine would be a glorious day when as a King of Phoenixes he would rise and the world would know his power. Never would the name of Ozai fade and be forgotten.

\------

That evening, Ozai had a very specific person brought to his audience chamber. It was unusual for him to hold audience so late in the day, and it was nearly unheard of for any Fire Lord to do it. Azula heard this, after a day that mercifully saw her attending lessons at the academy and having time with Ty Lee and even Mai, who for all that her face was carved from stone was someone she was coming to enjoy being around. Stone-faced might she be but Mai had a wicked sense of sarcasm that cut like a rapier, and she enjoyed hearing the ways Mai wielded it. And Mai too could keep a secret.

She saw Ozai leave his chambers. Azula made the same decision again that she'd made with her father, back when Grandfather had had his....accident, or so it was said. She'd seen him get up with _that_ expression again and even if Grandfather had miraculously not killed Zuzu there was nothing good that could come of it. So she followed Ozai to the throne room, where she was able to hide and to listen. What she saw made her eyes widen. An old woman with dark brown skin and hair white as the snows of her homeland. Grey eyes that listened keenly. Her hands were bound by manacles that blocked her from being able to flex them but she was otherwise unmarked as a prisoner.

"So, Prince Ozai," the wizened voice rasped with strength.

"Why am I here, and why am I alive?"

What Ozai said next would become a burden that eventually broke Azula, though she would find her way up from its weight.

"Milady Hama, how would you like to kill a Waterbender who is loyal to the Fire Nation?"

So too what she heard next. 

"Why should I trust you, Ozai Lackland?" 

"Because I am Ozai Lackland no more. Now I am Fire Lord. And it is Fire Lord Ozai who offers you a chance to kill a daughter of the Fire Lord, to escape, to return to your people a hero." 

Hama wished she could move her hands for a moment. All she could do was nod, and her voice very carefully level, she said "Very well then, Fire Lord Ozai. I accept this bargain. A life for a life."

Azula froze then. This was bad enough, but her father's words cut her to the bone and there was an ache that awoke in her then. In a few words he neatly destroyed all the long effort that her grandfather and father had cultivated, the myth that her father was capable of love and that her grandfather's creed could make anything but monsters.

"Good. My children are but weapons to reshape. If the weapon is defective, it has no right to exist."

Hama's smile was a horrid one though she did not see it. "Only one of your daughters, Fire Lord? Why not the other one?"

Ozai laughed, then for a moment. An unpleasant and grating sound. "If you do me this favor and Azula steps out of line I will gladly have you kill her, too."

Azula stared blankly then and then ran as fast as she could run. She quite literally slammed down Himiko's door, getting quite a few splinters but it didn't matter. Her sister's life was in danger.

Himiko stared at her blankly, her face marked with irrtation that Azula had torn down banners she would later carefully (and painfully) rework.

"What?" Her voice came out more curt than she'd intended. "Father's going to try to kill you!" Azula's voice was higher than usual with a warbling edge to it.

Himiko rolled her eyes. "You said that about Zuko and Grandfather and he's still here."

Azula's eyes almost blazed with her worry and her anger. "Father would not be Fire Lord now if not for that."

Himiko shrugged. "If what you say is true then he did something to protect us. Grandfather, yes, I could believe he would. Father? No."

She then looked at her door.

"And you tore down and tore apart scrolls I worked a very long time on, so _get out_."

The last two words were spoken coldly and Azula wept then, and for a moment Himiko was startled. For a moment Zula lunged at her only to hug her and to whisper in her ears "Come to my room. I won't let you get hurt. Father's talking to that witch, and she's very bad news. Please, sister, please. Please."

The sight of Azula acting like this made Himiko reassess things, as Grandfather had taught them.

She sighed heavily. "Very well."

But as they prepared to get up, one of the Yu Yan archers came to Himiko's room. He spoke in a rumbling basso voice: "Your father wants to see you, Princess Himiko."

The way he looked, the slight tells in him made Himiko start to wonder further if Azula was telling her the truth, but by then it was too late.

One of the last things she would remember of that night was Azula's tear-strewn face, the lines of grief that would be carved into her young starting to form that night, and the way her sister crumpled in her bedroom, sinking to her knees in an almost catatonic state.

\------

_The Grey Room:_

In later years she would come to term it the Grey Room, for it was a stark and unpainted metal chamber, with iron rivets visible.

In that chamber she would remember an old crone, a wizened woman of the savages from which she'd been rescued. Her hair was long and it was white, and this space was open to permit the light of the Full Moon to shine over them. The woman's eyes caught her own and then she moved her hands and her body was no longer her own.

For a long, long time she remembered nothing but darkness and pain from that night.

\-------

_Ozai's bedroom:_

When the door opened the Lady Hama was the last thing that Ozai had expected, let alone with that dour and murderous look on her face. She moved her hands and then Ozai found himself moving up from his bed and forcibly kneeling before her.

"Good," he heard her voice purring, low and rumbling.

"You are a fool, Ozai Lackland. Be you Fire Lord or no. You brought me the daughter of Hakoda and Kya, two who I raised as my own children in the hideous clothes of your culture, her locks mangled by some dreadful exercise of your power. She cannot speak the language of our culture, Firebender. You seek to cut her off from her own people."

He couldn't look at her eyes for she did not want him to and he realized then that for all his power she could kill him this night and none would be the wiser.

"I would have raised that Himiko under a proper name, one of our people, if I had had the chance. But, alas, that was not what you wished, was it? You wanted me to kill your daughter, to give the Fire Nation an excuse to kill my people. And to hurt your children. I despise your people and your culture and I have a very good reason to do so. You have more than earned it, Lackland.

But if you treat your own children like you treat her, the worst punishment I can and will give them is to leave you alive and raising them further for there is no greater enemy your children and the future of your nation has than you yourself.

I see it now, you wanted me to kill your father, the old monster. The one whose armies took me captive. Whose soldiers indulged the sin of Xijing on my flesh and made me feel, as I still do, a thing tainted."

 _Now_ she wanted him to look.

The moon shone through the window in a bright starlit night and all he saw for a moment was the same pair of eyes that Himiko had seen.

"I could kill you right now but it would make you a martyr. There would be a regency and your son would grow up as twisted and deformed and soul as you have."

She shook her head.

"So no, Fire Lord Ozai, I will let you live, and you will be forever damned to this knowledge. All your power, all your scheming, all your plots and bribes" and then she pulled out a knife from her robes and held it to her throat.

"That could end here, if I moved this even slightly. Power, Ozai, is worth only those who wield it. You have never been worthy of wielding it, and you never will be."

Then she placed the knife back in her robe and before he could react he saw her fist heading toward him and then darkness as the bloodbending ended.

Hama shook her fist, whining for a moment with the pain. "Amarok forgive me that was stupid. Hit him right on the dome."

She turned, then, and it was the Night of Blood in the Fire Nation royal palace. Guards were slain, almost the entire contingent of guards and Yu Yan archers who added to their ranks, serving to protect the Fire Nation royal family. Strangled by their own hands, swords impaling each other through the belly.

Princess Azula and Prince Zuko remembered the strange sight of someone bursting into their rooms at night, an old crone with grey eyes who looked at them for a moment seemingly with pity and then with scorn and she brandished a knife. She took locks of their hair as proof of the deed, a very very old and archaic even when she was a girl means of counting coup, but one that would not leave Princess Himiko, as the poor girl now called herself, mourning for her siblings.

Even with all her hatred she could see the fear in those childrens' eyes and she did not have it in her to kill a defenseless child afraid. To make them know fear, yes, but to kill them? Not like this. Not then.

Blood flowed on the grounds of the Fire Nation royal palace and an old woman left a trail of dead bodies behind her.

Into the night Hama vanished, and in the morning Ozai found the semi-conscious and badly wounded Princess Himiko who looked at him with hope and let him hold her. She was too broken to move or to see the way his expression changed and the manner in how it changed. Hama had spared her life, and she had given him names. And the Water Tribes, collectively, would rue the day.

\-------

The next day Ozai's purge would begin to extend outward from its first phases when the surviving guards who were merely mutilated and badly wounded from what was officially termed the "White Lotus Conspiracy" were arrested.

The monster, or whatever it was, that had wreaked such harm was gone and it had not gone to Prince Iroh or Princess Hino's rooms, nor to those of the bastards of Sozin.

In fear and in blood began the reign of Ozai, as in fear and in blood would it end.


	12. "Your young men shall speak prophecies and your old men shall dream dreams"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Prince Iroh goes to the Temple of Avatar Roku for advice, not knowing what to expect nor what he shall receive. 
> 
> Princess Himiko awakens from her wounds.....changed. 
> 
> The first year of Fire Lord Ozai's rule passes and the war continues.

_The Avatar Spirit's Realm in the Spirit World:_

The Avatar himself neither dreamed nor was he awake. He was caught in an ancient power's grip that shielded him from the weight of water and the iron fist of ice, as time passed. Evening and morning, day and night, years and decades. The Avatar did not dream, nor was he awake. Yet from shrines those of his past-lives who had lived in ten thousand years in shrines known and shrines forgotten watched and they saw. Grief had begun when the Air Nation had died and the Avatar who had run away was in denial that his people were forever gone. It had intensified as Sozin, blood-stained, rose from his genocide and expanded his war to a sequence of vicious wars in the Earth Kingdom. His first Marshals, Yesugei and Khubilai, had done great work as the Fire Nation saw it. 

Grief became a mountainous weight as vast as the ice and the snow as Sozin was succeeded by his youngest son, the others dying on the battlefield in the heroics, in the Fire Nation's view, of other wars. Azulon rose, a man of blood on a scale his father could never have imagined and a city burned and a city died. Over a million Earth Kingdom peasants and nobles alike expelled from towns that were burned down and reforged in the new iron image of the Fire Nation. Metal monsters began to cross the world and new tracks were laid that scarred its flesh.

The Fire Nation had changed under Fire Lord Ieyasu and then under Sozin. The changes accelerated under Azulon. It was no longer, as were its fellow nations, a nation of peasants whose visions were limited and narrow by the standard of the new days. The new railways changed the Fire Nation immeasurably, it made nations out of peasants, it brought a new kind of unity and a greater vision. Factories replaced artisans (and there was bloody strife over this under Sozin and the horrors unleashed meant even Ozai would not have to deal with its recurrence). Cities grew the greater in importance and population boomed.

The Earth Kingdom was larger, but even after a century of war the Fire Nation held an advantage in raw numbers that was growing.

These were how generals would have appraised the changes, the way the Fire Nation learned to move vast amounts of soldiers, to stamp its metal rivers and metal monsters on the world to amplify its logistics and did so heedless of the changes in the Earth Kingdom or elsewhere.

To the Avatar-spirit these were changes of grief not for the changes and the way the Fire Nation had broken ancient cycles, but for the vicious savagery of its wars and the prices paid on each generation that did so. It was the grief of the terrible bloated thing on its golden throne that had heard the prayers in blood and fire and answered them and grown the greater.

The Avatar-spirit watched but in a century seldom had anyone come to pray to the shrines who understood, or who had been touched by the spirit world and who could _see._

\------

_Shrine of Avatar Roku:_

Prince Iroh had kissed his wife when he told her that he wished to do this alone. The Fire Nation royal family knew that Roku had been murdered by Sozin. Quite how, or how Sozin's comet would have enhanced Sozin but not Roku infinitely more than Sozin and thus left him where he was but worse off, they did not know. The Fire Nation had taken that crime and compounded it by the massacre of the Air Nation and of Xijing and other acts stark and terrible and bloody. Worse, Iroh was the very image of Fire Lord Sozin, the murderer. His wife had suffered enough, if Roku were to strike him down for that he would let it happen and she would not have to witness this loss as she had, to a degree, that of her son in her fire-watching.

In the garb, dark silverblue, of a repentant man come to atone for a great wrong, Iroh walked to the shrine. A century of war and the absence of an Avatar had not made the Avatar-spirit's forms as a Firebender neglected. Such pious hypocrisy from his ancestors. The shrines were kept in brilliant condition, not as honoring the spirits that marked the world but as pride in deeds from a people who had spurned the very ways and replaced their old ways, the softer vision of Himiko-Amaterasu, the Shining August Sun-Queen for something more like the Mikaboshi, the Chaos-spirit who was said to lurk in the shadowy recesses of the Spirit World. That knowledge made him humbler and the sight of Avatar Roku in his prime, garbed almost as a Fire Lord would be in robes of stunning crimson and gold, hair dark as the deed that murdered him, brought him to his knees.

In a ritual that owed more to a legacy of the long-dead Air Nation monks, he thumped his chest with his fists bunched together.

His eyes bowed he sought to reach out to the Spirit World, but cautiously. He had seen the monster there that answered Fire Nation prayers and he was still an elder son. The creature was beyond mortal conc-

Light began to shine at the shrine, a brilliant blue light that could have been cold and harsh but was surprisingly warm and welcoming. Firebending, but not the stark and vicious discipline imposed by Sozin and amplified by Azulon. Warm, welcoming. Like the light of the Sun.

His eyes opened. There was a spirit standing before him but it was not some towering hulking thing oozing malice and a thirst for blood and death. Nor was it a shining opulently clad creature in armor that seemed barely human but with enough similarity to make it more fearsome. It was a man, a tall man, but still a man for all that. A long white beard extended past his chin. In the man's eyes and his cheekbones, Iroh saw with a sudden cold horror a resemblance to Ursa and to Azula. In his jawline and in elements of the body he saw the man he suspected Zuko would grow up to be.

All of a sudden some of Ozai's angered statements and why he seemed almost wistful and relieved that Ursa had fled with, of all possible people, a seemingly random cook made a horrible amount of sense and he bowed his head further.

 _ **Do not bow to me, grandson of Sozin.**_ It was a voice that could have been like a fire-whip in anger but it was understanding, a grandfatherly tone in it.

He dared to raise his eyes.

**_You have seen her. Agni. The being your nation worshiped as a deity of justice, and in that sense she can be managed. In a proper world where the Avatar-spirit were awake, and fully able to sustain the balance and facing a normal set of challenges to it, she would have been. It has been a long time, and our control has....slipped._ **

"Lord Roku," he gasped, in simple awe.

_**I am no-one's lord. I never was, and I never could have been. I knew what demons possessed Sozin. Ambition, greed, the desire to take his nation's new changes and new ways and to spread them. Were it to have been peaceful I would never have lifted a hand save in aid, but that was not the vision he told me. I heard the words of Agni, but there, I underestimated not the power of the divine, but the malice of the human heart.** _

_**Roku's face had a soft and unhappy expression, lips turned down and brows furrowed. Gods, or Goddesses, hear prayers and can from time to time act on them. In a world with an awakened Avatar they move through intermediaries, and the entities of Chaos raise challenges that each generation of the Avatar must meet, in addition to the little things. The evils of humanity. Now, I fear, a century of our absence and they will be able to take still more direct roles. Agni tires of the lines between the worlds blurring and she does not want to wait for the Convergence.** _

Iroh cocked his head. The what? He'd never heard of such a thing.

**_I fear she will seek to awaken a false one and even if some miracle should free us that all her schemes have been to this effect. A world where spirits and mortals meet and where Gods can take form to walk among mortals and to do as they will._ **

Then his eyes turned to Iroh.

_**And you have seen her, and you survived that sight. It has shown you what war unleashes. Some, I know, believe the Avatar exists to keep humanity locked in stagnation for all time. It is not so. We have never opposed change, grandson of Sozin. We welcome it, when it is a thing of peace and the goodness of the human heart but so many times and in so many places there are those who define it in the evil things. Brute force, bad faith, injustice, oppression, and persecution. Greed, the ability to wield a sword well and so all under Heaven must kneel before the new master of mankind, visionary to reshape the world.** _

_**That is not progress, Prince Iroh. That is not change. And in the....wake of what has happened to us that has had most of a century to run rampant.** _

Iroh accepted the words and understood them, as Roku moved to him. The spirit's hand on his shoulder felt grandfatherly, like his own grandfather who had been a kindly man and who, with his wife's encouragement, he had started to model himself off of. The simple contact led to Iroh taking that hand and feeling a momentary spasm of grief it would never be Lu Ten this way, again.

_**The Fire Nation is not forever damned because of its war. It has had a century to run rampant and a spirit world that favors war and carnage and not the more peaceful endeavors. To make peace after a century of war and bloody atrocities will not be an easy task, but it is the great things that are not. In life I erred from indecision and from trying to be too kind to people, to trust in an innate goodness that is not always there.** _

"Avatar Roku, where is the Avatar?"

Roku paused.

_**I cannot say. I do not mean to be cryptic, but all that I know is that our spirit lingers in a state neither sleeping nor waking. But we are not dead. At some point, we shall awaken again and then begin to set things to rights.** _

Iroh nodded.

_**When we do, we will be, I fear, young and a master only of one element. Air. As all Avatars are born natural masters of their first element this is sadly not what it could be.** _

_**When we are reborn we will need guides, aides. People who can teach us bending and give us an understanding of the spirit world. And you, Iroh, will do me two favors.** _

There was a hardness in his voice.

_Find my granddaughter, and free my descendants from what your brother is seeking to do to them. And.....I send to you a task. Learn the spirit world and of its ways. It is the Avatar who balances but we will be a child, in need of a man's insight. This you can offer._

For a moment a wistful note intruded on his voice.

_**Might I suggest, too, relearning to enjoy the simple tea ceremony and the art of Pai Sho? The White Lotus Tile, in particular, has an art that you might welcome.** _

Iroh nodded for a moment almost stupidly and then Roku laughed.

**_Good. You are proof, as are many in your nation, Prince Iroh, that there is goodness in you that never truly died. Your arts are not fell ones, you simply chose to amplify them. In the old days there were warrior-princes among the Air Nation no different. Qin the Conqueror and Admiral Kaliik the Ocean Master. Agni may be your goddess but between her and the Chaos-spirit you call the Mikaboshi whose name I dare not speak aloud, there are always spirits who can and will appeal to the evil things. Your nation had a century of them and of our absence._ **

**_And we are to blame as much as you, in our own ways._ **

Iroh's eyes met those of Roku.

 _ **Go then, Prince Iroh, and take Kyoshi's descendant with you**_ -Iroh stiffened. Hino was a-Roku's cryptic smile confirmed it.- ** _And go forth to learn of the Spirit World and its ways. There is a burden upon you Iroh no less than in the days of the Dragon of the West. You are not meant for a throne and the rule of bodies, you are meant to offer a way out, to end a war and to bring peace to souls made restless with war and war's fell hand._ **

Iroh nodded then.

The light faded and it was not long thereafter that he went to speak to his wife and told her in a low voice of the things Avatar Roku had said. All of them.

Hino had told him in turn in a quiet voice that Ozai knew of her descent and had simply held it secret. That had disturbed him more and so he went to his brother, telling him a partial truth of a dream he'd had.

Ozai had looked at him then with a tiger's eyes and a smile of teeth that though human seemed fang-like.

"Go on your quest, brother. May the spirit world be with you."

It was a different reaction than Iroh anticipated, though the attempted murders he feared never quite came to pass (for Ozai was too deeply afraid of his brother and his brother's popularity even at the height of his terror to do any such thing).

For two years Iroh would be gone and he would see much and learn much and find his way to a library where a great owl-spirit gave him time to read and to learn deeply and spoke to Hino as to an old friend.

And in that absence, and in the absence of Iroh's light the Fire Nation's palace became a darker and a colder place.

\------

_In the Ice, a mile from the village of Inuk:_

Deep beneath an iceberg a blue light began to pulse. For the first time in most of a century, the Avatar _dreamed._

\--------

_Hakoda's room:_

In the room he shared with his wife, who was soon to have their youngest child, a new daughter who would grow up in her own ways with a lesser mirror of Sokka's burdens, Hakoda's body was wrapped around and beside Kya's. It was a more possessive way for each of them to sleep with the other but then they had lost a child in the snows and at night the guilt and the haunted element of that crept out in ways the daylight repressed.

That night, Hakoda had the dream for the first time, a dream that in its own ways would reverberate through the course of his family's life and its history.

\-------

_Hakoda found himself in a strange place. At the one hand, beneath his feet, grass of the finest green, so fine its color that it almost hurt his eyes with the reflected light of the Sun. Before the grass there was snow and ice and a vast fortress, where a great draconic figure with multiple heads slept curled around a fortress._

_A small howling as if of a wolf cub learning to howl for the first time echoed, stunningly loud._

_There was a strangeness in that voice, a familiarity that lurked there between the multi-layered metaphors of dreams. Something that in the dream made him feel cold and clammy as if he dared not accept it._

_The dragon stirred then and it opened a golden eye, horribly human in its shape, and one of its heads turned to him._

_It was a vast and hulking shape, its lips parting in that same eerily human sense._

**_I see you thief, and I smell your air._ **

**_My terrible swift sword shall not be taken by some savage of the snows._ **

_A strangeness in that voice, unnaturally human, if at a deeper and more reverberating sense._

_Then there was a mass on the snows that moved in a lupine loping fashion, towering and hulking in a manner no true wolf would have been._

_Eyes glowed with an eldritch light and teeth shone with that same light mirrored with a reddish hue._

_His mouth gaped open. Amarok, Finder of the Lost._

_**The cub needs protection, son of my people. She is lost and she is hurting, and the hydra's claws reach around her to ensnare her deeply.** _

_**Find her.** _

\-------

Hakoda awoke, gasping in a raw panic. Amarok, in an omen-dream. Nothing good could come of seeing an omen-dream, especially when that God of all the pantheon showed his face. A hydra, a fortress, a wolf cub howling. It made no sense.

\------

"Sokka!" His mother's voice was sharp with worry. Sokka couldn't resist rolling his eyes.

He was not a kid anymore and yet any time the wind picked up here his parents were not only watching his little brother like a hawk, but him, too. He missed Katara as much as any of them, and he still didn't understand what kind of world would let a baby die in winter like that. It did not hurt him in the ways it did his parents, because he was too young for the fullness of that heart and in many ways blissfully ignorant, then. He made a point of ignoring his mother's voice as he walked along, tapping his boomerang on his shoulder.

He was getting better with it, and with throwing it. His father was teaching much of a warrior's ways though there were shadows behind his eyes that Sokka did not understand then and not until much later in his life, long after the war had become a thing of occasional nightmares in the night that so many in that generation took for granted, did he come to understand it. When his father's voice bellowed in a much more raspy sense, Sokka froze and his shoulders slumped slightly.

What good did it do him to learn a warrior's ways and how to wield a warrior's weapons if he could not use them as a soon to be man would? Men did not sit in houses and fret (that his father did passed his mind, for what child at his age ever cared what his father really thought passed a point). They went out, they did things. Yet to the house he went, his mother glaring at him, her belly larger with her unborn child. That she had a worried look in her eyes did not disturb him. The look of raw worry in his father's face did.

"Next time we call your name, you come right when we call." His father's voice growled with that note to it, more a polar bear-dog's snarl than anything else.

"Yes, Papa," he sighed.

Desna looked at him curiously, as he didn't understand this any more than he did. When his parents weren't looking Sokka shrugged and his little brother ran off to play with one of his toys. Even a few years later Sokka would have paid much closer attention to the low-voiced conversation his parents had and the words 'Omen dream' and the need to consult the angkakok.

Then, he was pouting over being called in and simply went to his own space and worked on his slate. As had become a tradition for him and his brother, he wrote the name 'Katara' at the top. His sister might be gone, but she lived in their hearts, and nobody who lived in the heart, the memory, and the songlines of the angakoks was ever truly dead.

Hakoda looked at his son with some amount of worry. "He will hate us for this, Kya, but we must keep him safe. If that vision referred to one of our children...."

Kya nodded, their eyes meeting.

"I lost one child, Hakoda. I won't lose more. Or you."

Hakoda nodded and they shared a kiss, their faces leaning in together.

Soon it would be time for the chieftain to meet with others of his people.

In another world he would have been the King of a people as powerful as the North and more populous. Even now he had the power to command....and command's burden.

\-------

_The Fire Nation:_

The New Fire Lord soon held his trial of the White Lotus Conspiracy, so-called. Various of his generals confessed in public to being traitors against the Fire Nation, members of a cabal that worked to undermine its heart. Not from dissatisfaction with a war that had stretched overlong and slew more people than any were willing to credit, no. From avarice, anger, wrath. Fear of the Royal Family's success.

The Trial of the White Lotus Conspiracy brought the first shadow of fear, and it was the pretext for Ozai's next action. His father Azulon had had three organizations that had served as his Eyes and Ears, and then most of their leadership had died in the terrible Night of Blood.

What was three, Ozai consolidated into one. A Committee for Royal Security, headed by a bloated toad-like man with a sneering face, and it was rumored (and it would turn out in later years that the rumors were horrifyingly whitewashed), a predilection for young girls. This squalid-looking figure, hulking in his weight, bald-headed, and clean-shaven, would become Ozai's iron fist, one of the most ruthless symbols of his reign.

When in the aftermath of the first steps of the Purge a tepid protest was launched by a very few brave nobles, Ozai next expanded on his father's Hidden Spaces, as he called an existing set of camps for war prisoners and for politicals, as the camp guards (and it was their chieftain, the dreadful Hideyoshi, who would become as well ruler of the new System of Camps for Corrective Labor, or the CorrelLas, as some came to call it.

The Fire Nation's factories were hungry and the war was eating into some of its abilities to meet its own needs (and would eat into more under Fire Lord Ozai, whose grasp of details Sozin and Azulon knew instinctively were there) was changing and not for the better. The Correlas began to meet those needs and the Fire Nation began a newer and much more viciously cynical approach under Ozai of promising captive benders freedom and much more regular access to food if they would meet the needs of its factories.

All of this took up much of Ozai's first year on the throne, with CRS head Hideyoshi serving as an architect of elements that were as much Ozai's visions as his own action but gleefully taking hatred as an excuse to extend his own power.

For Ozai's children this first year was mercifully one of relative parental neglect, their mother abandoning them all (Zuko grieving it more, Azula somewhat less, Himiko not at al). Their relationships would change, too. Azula and Zuko spent time at Himiko's bedside as she recovered with the aid of the finest doctors of the Fire Nation (and it was in that process that they all met the hulking bloated figure of Hideyoshi, and found his gaze upon them all something that left them afraid in a manner they did not understand, as he came in to check on her recovery and to report to father). As before they listened to stories told, though Himiko's eyes seemed more detached and she seemed withdrawn.

Not, as Azula was learning to do, in a mask of perfectionism and exulting in the raw power of her bending, freed of Grandfather's iron-fisted approach and re-approaching a healthy weight for someone her age. It was a mask that made her seem to be more than merely taught this oceanic approach, instead she seemed to be becoming as the ocean itself. At the surface calm, but. when she finally was able to walk on her own feet again and regained the fullness of that motion, capable of flying into a ferocious attitude far less predictable than that of Azula and much more dangerous at its core.

Her sparring with Azula had become still more like actual fighting than it had before, and where before it had been two competitive people becoming navel-gazed on their bending to the exclusion of all else, even their own safety, now Himiko seemed to fight to banish some kind of shadow, a lurking fear in her that only an ever more capricious element could exorcise. The training ground became more and more like the battlefield and in later years when Zuko went to the war, as would all of them, they took more naturally to it than even they had had reason to expect.

The fears that possessed Himiko and which erupted out of her in these reactions were not ones she would readily confide even to Hisaki. She slept in rooms that barred the moonlight, and insisted on sleeping in rooms with paint.

Azula began to draw closer to Mai and Ty Lee, spending her time pouring over the history of the Fire Nation. She'd noticed that much of its earliest history, of the earliest Fire Lords and a potential time before it was seemingly blank. Of the time in the last thousand years to the time of Sozin and Azulon there was a vast amount of information yet the world before that might have sprung as from the very ground itself. Poring over that history helped her to hide the guilt and worry gnawing in her heart, and this as much as anything else accounted for the strange elements of her sparring with Himiko, for she considered herself at fault for what had happened to her and viewed it as a kind of penance.

Mai and Ty Lee became part of her world, but to her, in the Palace, they were too redolent with its secrets. Her grandfather had wanted to kill her brother. Her father had wanted to kill her sister. They were trapped, they were all trapped, and she had her father's favor, for now, and she dared not lose it. So she locked away parts of herself under the firmest possible locks, seeking to keep the Fire Lord's eyes on her and in an approving sense and away from her brother and sister.

The stress with this began to build early and she knew that her uncle had gone on a set of quests to learn exploration of the spirit world, whatever that meant. Yet he wrote letters to each of them, letters that Himiko never opened, that Zuko opened eagerly and which she read in the privacy of her room. Of them all, it was Azula who realized in those letters, in her uncle's meandering phrasing and hidden things that lurked in plain sight between sentences saying one thing and meaning another, was someone who _understood_ things.

She looked at her current letter.

_Father is insisting that I start to learn more complex means of mixing things._

_I.....I love bending. I love being able to bend. It is something...precious to me. But the way father is doing this, it seems.....I don't know._

_Uncle Iroh, how can you see these thing and say them this clearly but father cannot? Is this sickness in Father, and in his way of doing thing, something in us, too? Will we grow up to become like him?_

She slipped the letter into its envelope and sent it off.

Quietly, after looking around to see that no-one was watching, she opened a drawer in her bedroom and took out her set of letters and the one at the top.

_Princess Azula,_

it began. 

_I am grateful to hear from you and your words to an old man who is learning to make peace with the world and its injustices. Your characters are well-formed and your script is done in the finest style which any master of our script would approve of and in a manner that others would envy._

_You are kind to an old man and an old woman to write to us and to tell us of events in the capital, and of things which your brother does not mention that are only to his credit. My niece, I write these words in the strictest kindness and sincerity._

_In the past, i worried that you would wind up like my brother, but I can see in this, and in the ways that you write and in the eyes that you have for things and for your family that you are not._

_I ask that you keep writing us, for wherever we are in this wide, wide world, the Palace and the Capital of our great nation are and remain our home._

_We love you._

The first letter. Simple, sincere praise. The kind her mother never gave her (because she was Ozai's darling girl, the perfect bender, who relished in her strength and swaggered with it more like a stereotype of a man). Gratitude, for she had written in that first letter of how Zuko's mastery of bending forms was increasing but more than that how he was able to simply make people happier around him by being there. The prince of the heart, against the Fire Lord of ashes and thunder and lightning. She had written the little things that Zuko did and took for granted and it was precisely because he did that she wanted her uncle to know. 

To know that one of them was not a monster, not in any true sense.

So simple a set of things with motivations veiled in shadows, and yet from them a letter like this that she read and re-read.

She smiled, then. Ty Lee and Mai were her friends but here, her heart poured out and she was able to write to someone who could know, and understand and that meant e _verything._

_\-------_

Zuko read deeply in these years, delving into the romances and the literature of the Fire Nation. He became the most well-read prince of his people since his great-great grandfather, learned in the hidden elements and the circumlocutions of his people's poetry. He became a slow but steady practicer of the Haiku, seeking to master its syllables, and in between he worked on his katas and relaxed in the pool. It was a lonely year and one of hidden sorrows. Fear was growing in the palace and in the Fire Nation like a smothering cloud but it had not yet affected him or his life, and it was another in his good years. 

One that taught him much of the old ways and the old masters, and left him somewhat disquieted. Great-grandfather Sozin and Grandfather Azulon said firebending was a ferocious and terrible thing of swiftness and attacks and hyperactivity.

These old masters wrote of warmth and serenity in the flames, of wheels of fire and becoming one with light and enlightenment.

It was a vision that entranced him and it began to affect his katas and his fire, which was not the blue jagged fires of his sister or the bright orange one of his father. His fires became golden and welcoming, as these other breathing exercises gave him peace.

For a year his father neglected this lost in consolidating his throne and the iron fist of Hideyoshi and the new CorreLa camps that would become part of that ever-thickening fog of fear and horror.

_\-------_

The year passed, and with his grasp on the throne consolidated, and his new regime set in place and its policies likewise, the war going smoothly (Omashu had fallen after a siege of eight months to Marshal Temujin who had imprisoned and locked away its mad so0called king), Ozai at last began to turn his eyes once more to his children and to their path....


	13. "Whosoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall blood be shed"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Himiko begins to learn to master the water of life. 
> 
> Fire Lord Ozai continues to reshape the Fire Nation and turns his hands to seeking to reshape his children. 
> 
> Marshal Temujin defeats an Earth Kingdom attack aimed at retaking Omashu and freeing its king.

_Fire Nation Capital, First Month of the new year:_

_Uncle Iroh,_ Azula wrote, her face frozen with determination. There was a bandage on her face and she knew thanks to Himiko, who had given her the wound, that it would fade without a trace. The bandage was less for the bleeding and more for how much even a fading wound of this kind had _hurt._

_Things continue to change here. Father has found a new lackey. Not just that toad Hideyoshi*. He's found a soldier who has changed his name. He calls himself the Hammer+, now. An ugly man, with an ugly soul. Between them the hand of the Corrective Labor camps is starting to reach out. People are disappearing. I believe that I and my friends are safe, as long as I publicly profess loyalty to my father and to his works. Father trusts me, and insofar as he's capable of it, if it is something he can at all do, I believe he may even love me. So I, and my friends, are safe. Himiko is, too.  
_

_Zuko, his son and heir, my brother with the big heart who helps people and who sees with eyes that do not disguise anger how the Red-Blacks are growing in power and arrogance and what it is that they do.....Uncle, Zuko has a heart and a soul. He sees what this is and what it is becoming and he is angry. He is not wise, however, for he speaks the truth and in a realm like my father wishes, what is more dangerous than the truth?_

_Zuko tells me, sometimes, when he's got moments of a maturity that amazes me, that he believes that if people hold to an internal truth that no matter the storm and lightning of a tyrant or a ruler who embodies tyranny, that truth will endure beyond the walls of the world and the sands of time. He said this after reading the words of an Earth Kingdom philosopher, their great sage. Mo Zi. I worry about him, for he will not be able to bear what it takes to present one face in public and another in private._

_Father has made himself a man of steel, with the policy of 'let them hate as long as they fear.' This will not last. Nothing like this can ever last, and I hope some day that when it does fall that I will be with you, and Aunt Hino. Father's works sow terror and hate, and he forgot the mantra of the first Temujin that the Marshal took his name from. One can win an empire from the back of a komodo dragon but one cannot govern from it. Father intends to govern from it and I do not know what will become of us._

_I have read the scrolls you suggested, the works of Kuruk. You did not tell me that he was an Avatar and that this was a transcription of his words and his view of the world. There are times, Uncle, where I curse the fate that landed Zuko, Himiko, and me in the hands of our father when you are the better father to all of us._

Azula sat back and looked. These were formal words, written in fine characters++. There were little meanings coded into things. Meanings that no Red-Black oaf barely able to count to twenty-one by dropping his pants could decode. She read it again, carefully, and nodded. These last paragraphs were the heart of the letter where she poured out her feelings. In the earlier one she had written much of the Hammer and his Ministry of the Interior and its wider-ranging effects.

And very quietly in small denotations at the margin where the careless reader and most censors would neglect, had written certain details of what Hideyoshi and his new Committee were up to.

She could sense the fear settling in on the capital. It was almost a tangible thing, the kind to produce a thick fog and greyness. What she would never write and it would be years before she was even willing to dare admit it, was the fear that if not for what she'd heard (and here she dared not write in greater detail and she would never do so until long in the future) and seen twice-over, perhaps even if she had once-over she would be what she feared Himiko was becoming in truth. By the simple ill fortune of hearing her father casually planning to murder her sister, she had been spared a fate that would have been hers.

The vision of an Azula who was a master bender and poor at everything else, who never aspired to be anything different....a monster in full with an unalloyed core of vileness and not the fearful and haunted creature that she was within a mask of outward conformity to her father's wishes danced behind her eyes. If any had been there to see for a moment she would have seemed gaunt and the shadows beneath her eyes dark indeed. She held her brush away as her hands trembled and wiped away tears, for this was the fate she had been so narrowly delivered from.

When she was ready, she put her brush back in the ink and continued to write, finishing out the letter with a paragraph describing one of Ty Lee's jokes and a simple story that was her attempt at one. She knew she could not do jokes well. The persona she relied on in public had done that kind of damage, among others but it did not matter. She tried, in letters to her uncle. That had to count for something. It had to.

When she was done, she waited for the ink to dry, folded it in an envelope, and it was shipped out. Even nobles had letters read by Red-Blacks, these days. Only the Royal Family was immune, even the bastards of Sozin and Azulon.

\-------

Zuko pored over a codex, reading it devoutly. These works of the old Firebenders, those not locked away in Fire Lord Sozin's Night of Unremembering. The Firebending they described was so different and yet it met his needs better. It filled his soul with peace. Not the frenetic and angry gestures and the specific breathing exercises that went with them. Tranquility, golden fire. Wheels of flame and constructs of fire that the modern art had lost, and had only vague memories reshaped for war.

He had also read works of lore and of the Fire Nation's Gods, and it amazed him that other deities had multiple books. The lore of Zuko the Storm-God, for whom he was named, and his confrontation with the Eight-Headed Hydra, from whence he'd carved out the royal regalia of the Fire Nation as a gift to his sister Himiko-Amaterasu. The lore of Himiko herself, who unlike dreadful Agni was the main Goddess in the old days. So very different this Himiko from the waterbender sister of his. She had _changed._ Become harder, become crueler.

Moreso than Azula and he wouldn't have believed it.

Only a single book in the old days covered much of Agni and it was in this book that he saw the traditional image that Fire Lord Sozin knew in his reading of this work and Fire Lord Azulon had used as a guide before whatever happened in Xijing had.

It was an image of a towering being with a strangely shaped face, a kind of ridged crown of gold, hair of straw extending outward. She wore armor, not the suits of the older more impractical days, nor the modern kind. A divine armor of jointed plates. Her mouth was fanged with sharp and wicked-looking teeth and her eyes glowed like stars, with streaks of light that extended outward like the corona of the Sun when the eclipses happened. Around her was a strange fire, a sickly brownish-green light. Light that seemed not simply dead but _murdered_ and there were skulls in the light, marked by agonized screams.

Reading that and reading the lore that spoke of Agni as the last of the Fire Nation's gods to be worshiped in its pantheon following the strange Night of Dead Stars in between the passage of Avatar Salai and her successor, Avatar Maodun. On that night a new deity had come to the Fire Nation, a towering entity of strange light and lust for blood and death, and the Fire Nation revered her as the Goddess of Justice and the Lady of the Gallows.

To make an offering to Agni was to offer death, literally or metaphorically and the greater results were gained from literal death.

This was the fearsome entity his father worshiped and had seen fit to expand her replacement of Himiko-Amaterasu, whose works were much kinder and gentler and fit into that first kind of fire.

A phrase recurred as he read it, the words supposedly spoken by Agni in her appearance as Salai was reincarnated as an Earthbender.

**_Mine the hands that kill, mine the hands that heal._ **

**_Mine the hands that stilled the wine dark sea._ **

**_Mine the hands that set the stars to burn._ **

**_I am the Undying Flame that ever hungers._ **

**_Mine the knowledge of the gallows and of the secret things._ **

**_Ask of me and I shall give you the nations for your inheritance and the world as your possession._ **

**_Let those who ask be wary, for the Undying Flame ever burns and never consumes, and shall make each sacred dream real and befouled._ **

Strange words. They seemed set to a poetic meter that matched no known tradition, nor those set in the spirit world.

In a letter Uncle Iroh had let slip, almost as if by accident in a state of fear (and it was hard to imagine the Dragon of the West ever afraid of anyone or anything) that he had seen Agni in the spirit world and 'she was great in scale but the most fearsome thing I have ever seen.'

Reading this work, as the day slipped into the night, Zuko understood that and put the book away with the cautious reverence of someone who encountered a very dangerous predator. Leaving it in the shelf from which a great cloud of dust had risen and led to his coughing, he took two books on Himiko with him.

They remained in his bag as he resumed practicing his Katas.

His were that old style, old and wondrous, soothing to the soul.

Zula's were the frenetic type demanded since the days of Great-Grandfather Sozin. From her rose walls of fire and whips of same. From her came the lightning.

Himiko was also there and her actions were strange. She conjured water that could not possibly have been there in such numbers and he looked at the withered plants around her and Zula seemed to shrug for a moment. She hadn't seen what did this either and it wasn't the training ground. The power and the lavabending tapped into it in a demonstration by Roku meant this ground was fertile. It could have been a space for a garden, not a blackened, warped hellscape.

He did not see Mai, Ty Lee, and Usaki come in, Usaki a bit away from the other two.

Usaki looked curiously at the plants while Mai watched impassively, seeing the ways Zuko's Katas differed so signally from Zula's or from others.

Then they heard a voice clearing his throat and their friends bowed gravely and left, for they knew better than to linger at the ways Fire Lord Ozai spoke to his children.

\--------

Himiko had seen Fire Lord Ozai come in and then opted to experiment with the next step. The Oceanic approach mentioned this as one of the most deadly and effective arts of waterbending, and one of its most secret for its sheer scale. They had said it only worked under a full moon (and she had no doubt that it did) but she had learned, slowly and by degrees, by experimentation on animals that it did not have to. Her hands moved into a different posture and then Azula's fires guttered out as her body froze and was locked under a will not her own.

With a smile in what was meant to emulate the smile of Papa Ozai's that was close to friendly, she made Azula move from the kata and bow to their father, as Zuko saw this and stared in horror and tripped from his posture in his own Kata, his own fires likewise guttering out.

Azula could not even blink her eyes under the control of this force unless Himiko willed her, and she could not move her lips. Her mouth was slammed shut and she felt the slow onrushing pressure of being unable to breathe. Daddy saw this, surely even something like him could-

And then he did.

"Well done, Princess Himiko", he said firmly as his hands clapped together in five claps that led to Azula wanting to scream. "You have mastered the secret behind the Night of Blood, and have found a way to practice it that will not instill fear. This is one of your greatest gifts, and I expect to see more practice from it."

Azula's gasp as she was able to fill her lungs with air, when Himiko willed it, and the ways her eyes blinked meant a humiliating weakness. Whatever Himiko was doing, it did something few things in her life would ever do. It gave her a completely unfiltered and sincere _fear._

\---------

Ozai turned to Zuko, who saw his father's disapproval and the sneer on his face.

"Those are old Katas, son." His words were cold and hostile. "Why are you doing Katas from before the era of Sozin?"

"They....they...."

"They what?"

"They are the oldest form of Firebending. I wanted to experiment."

"Ah, the oldest," Ozai sneered, crossing his arms in front of his chest. "This is the Fire Nation, boy. We don't cling to tradition. We have built railways with our Juggernauts upon them to conquer distance. We have mastered iron-clad ships that wield great power to conquer the ocean to a point the Waterbenders have not sought to repeat against us the fate of their so-called Ocean Master, Kaliik, Scourge of the World-Sea. We have mastered the Air in a manner that the long-dead Airbenders know nothing. If we wished to live in tradition like the dead Air Nation or the stolid primitive masses of the Earth Kingdom, we too would be living in cities infested with the dropping of livestock and where the task of moving their corpses in cities is a full time occupation.

We too would live in a world conceiving only of lords and peasants and kings, and the throne and the altar. 

We have built factories, boy. Railways. We have built a world that is modern, a world our own.

The worship of tradition and the old days uncritically keeps the Earth Kingdom backwards and reliant on the brainless courage of its louse-ridden peasantry to endure in our war. You shame me as you shame all of us by wielding such disciplines."

He raised his hand and walked to Zuko, and as the fires ignited around it Zuko gritted his teeth. Tears formed a bit in his eyes but he did not let them fall and as his flesh smoked and his robe scorched, Ozai snarled and then turned to Himiko.

"Heal your brother," was all he said as he stalked out in wrath.

Himiko placed her hands upon him and the pain faded, and what he saw in her eyes he did not like and he could not continue to meet her gaze.

\----------

_Three Months into the second year of the Reign of Ozai:_

_The Temujin Line to the southeast of Omashu:_

"Wu Zi, Wu Zi!" The chant of the Earth Nation's army was a rolling thing. This was an army that was no small thing, either. A force cobbled together from the remnants of the one that had fled the fall of the city and reinforcements from Ba Sing Se.

Marshal Temujin brushed his mustache with a snarl.

As he raised his hand his most powerful benders moved in unity and the smell of ozone rose, even as the Earthbenders raised clouds of dust to try to shield themselves. Lighting fell forward and the dust clouds wavered as the bolts struck individual Earthbenders, who roared in pain. The battle continued as the Firebenders summoned walls of fire and in Marshal Temujin's bold vision, something that in truth could be managed well only by Avatars (but his vision did not need it to be managed well, only for it to exist) slowly began to strike into the rock summoned by Earthbenders, pouring ever greater amounts of heat into it. The rock began to burn a brilliant reddish orange and it became the lifeblood of the Earth, a volcanic molten force that set a few of the less cautious Earthbenders alive as living torches, whose shrieks as of those tormented by the nastiest levels of Yaoma's domain sent dismay into the Earth Kingom horde.

Another massed array of lightning sent that army reeling in headlong flight as Marshal Temujin laughed, a hollow and slightly fearful laugh. If his great idea had failed the Red-Blacks would have no doubt come to hunt him and to send him to the CorreLas. Some questioned why the Fire Nation army's discipline on the whole would become as tenacious as those of the best forces of the Dragon of the West's armies.

If they had known more of what the Fire Nation was already coming to know to its sorrow, they would have understood.

Marshal Temujin kept to himself that for all that his nation's lords sneered at the Earth Kingdom as motivated by mindless courage and weight of numbers, a state whose generals fought for fear of the most dangerous of the Corrective camps should not sneer at them.

It was presented as a great victory even when in truth it was a half-hearted skirmish where a professional army routed an ill-trained levy that had overestimated the impact of the failure before Ba Sing Se and had not expected to truly fight.

This had been a simple battle in its own terms. Marshal Temujin knew there would be more and that they would be nowhere near as easy.

One Firebender might be worth ten Earth Kingdom barbarians, but there were always twelve barbarians.

\----------

Himiko's face was serene as she looked at the flowers around the lake. The scrolls she'd read, those _other_ scrolls that her father had provided her, showed her that this was a possibility. It was not one she'd entertained before now but with the nightmare of those grey eyes and the memory of that horrid pain of feeling herself almost killing herself by her own hand, she was determined that nothing would ever be allowed to hurt her again.

Above flowers and small shrubberies she stood, and then her eyes closed. She _pulled_ and then the water was called straight from the plants (and unknowingly, a little turtleduckling that had come too close to this and fell, dessicated and silent and unmoving and would never rise again).

When a solid stream of water manifested and seemed to take a shape as if a great oarfish in front of her, Himiko's often grave face changed into a smile to mirror that of Papa Ozai's. This _did_ work. She would never lack for water again....and there was, of course, the symbolic aspect, too. She would bring death and the desert with her wherever she walked and there would be fear of her.

Now _she_ would make _others_ know the kind of fear she'd known.

Her grin intensified when the streams of water became a set of ice-shards, gleaming viciously in the light over the training ground. She heard a strange sound behind her and turned to see Azula, Mai, Ty Lee....and Usaki. Who was well away from her sister and her cronies.

The sound was not from her sister, or her cronies (though she did not miss that Azula's face was pale and her mouth clasped her hands at the sight of the plants (and she did not notice the turtleduckling)). It was from Usaki, who made it again, a strangled gasp of horror. 

"That poor turtleduck" she said in a strange tone of voice. Himiko shrugged. Animals had no right to a claim to superiority to humanity. Her smile shifted to something more malicious and she hurled four of her ice shards straight at a distracted Azula, aiming for her face and one for her throat.

Azula's little crony, the acrobat, cried "Watch out!" and jerked her sister away, the shards shattering on the ground and as Azula gave her that look of fear she welcomed, she heard Zuko shouting as he ran near her, to Azula's left. "What's wrong with you! You almost killed her!"

She turned to Zuko then and with a bit of water from her pouch formed an icicle pointing straight for him with that same smile and he was silent. Himiko relished this.

Azula was one of the greatest firebenders of her age, perhaps any age. Zuko.......was not his sister but he would be among the great, if not the greatest. And they feared her in the heart of the Firebenders' own domain,

Himiko walked to Usaki and said to her in a low voice "Done with training for today and the academy lessons were easy. Would you like to spend time with me?" If Usaki was pale and nodding with a bit of fear, Himiko elected not to see it, even if it saddened her. She wanted her siblings afraid of her, because she could not trust anyone, not entirely. But if she could, it would be Usaki who had the least to fear.

Together they strode off, as Azula, her anger boiling over at what had happened again turned to her left, where Zuko froze for a moment and let out her rage in a furious blend of fireballs and lightning bolts. Seeing the sheer _scale_ of his sister's wrath in the explosion of blue flame that left the ground almost _molten_ where it struck, Zuko froze at first. Mai and Ty Lee were speechless, and then Mai, stoic, quiet Mai grabbed Zuila's shoulder.

"Wake up, Azula! Your brother's right there!"

The haze faded for a moment and Azula's rage stilled. By some good fortune she had missed Zuko, most of her blasts too short from him, a few of the lightning bolts behind him. Zuko remained frozen in the sheer shocked awe of the moment as Azula looked at her hands and abruptly faded.

Ty Lee whistled in a low tone of voice. "Well that was fun."

Mai gave her a sharp glare and then went to Zuko. She was not so secretly relieved he was all right, and even if Azula had done those things she did not think Azula had it in her, truly, to hurt her own siblings. Himiko, seemingly, very much so.

Azula was lost to the red haze of _fury_ and hadn't seen Zuko there, she had just turned away from them and moved to where she knew her friends were not and had _erupted_ in a display of power that stunned them. Himiko had _intended_ those icicles to be wielded as blades to hurt her sister.

Mai and Ty Lee saw more of Azula's softer side, so they understood this at one level. The Azula in public, the faithful child of Ozai, even they feared her and knew they were right to fear her, for what the Fire Lord wanted were people who were inhuman, in skill and in ability to relate to and to be around others.

That evening Zuko heard a pale-faced Azula whose eyes were red and who had streaks of tears down her face, holding her wrist which had her robes charred away telling him she was sorry, that she had raged and not seen him.

'Azula always lies,' he thought. She had told him grandfather wanted him dead, and that had not happened. She would tell him at night she loved him and in the day he was Dum-Dum on a good day and prone to having to get his exercise learning to dodge lightning since he couldn't possibly redirect it. Nothing had that ability, in bending. Save an Avatar and the Avatar was no more.

He heard her words but he said nothing and he did not care.

\---------

 _Azula,_ she read in her Uncle's letters. _You were right to be angry and afraid, and I know that you did not intend to strike your brother. If I doubted it, the sheer anguish in your words and the tears that marred your characters indicated it. You are many things, but someone who could intentionally kill your sibling, especially at the age all of you are, is none of them. You are an amazing child to confess this and your fears, and it is my wish that this journey we are on should finish soon and then you will have people around you who can help._

_Your Aunt Hino and I are going to a place of wonder. A library, Princess. The Library of Wan Shi Tong. There are scrolls here that can help with many things, and perhaps with the great spirit's permission we might be able to take them with us._

_Do not fear that you are a monster, and do not keep calling yourself that. A monster would have gloated and written in triumph about the display of her power, not felt shame that she was so lost to fear and rage from Himiko's inexplicable actions that she lashed out near her brother. At no point did your power go near him. That is what you should see._

She read the words, but she did not understand them.

The look in Zuko's eyes after that, and the ways he reacted to her public self having to conform to what her father wanted in forcing him to learn speed by dodging her lightning (which she was amazed at his skill with and even his father grudgingly acknowledged that of his children Zuko was becoming by far the fastest, and that dodging on a battlefield was by far a very useful trait indeed).....

In public she sneered at Zuko, dismissed him as 'weak ol' Dum Dum' and unleashed ever more powerful bending that his, for all his own skill and ability, could not hope to match. Where blue fire clashed with orange her fire overwhelmed his without much difficulty in that process. In public she was haughty, cold, cruel. Mai and Ty Lee went along with it.

In private they saw her shaken and weeping and afraid of what it meant that it was so easy for her to be this, and of what she could be.

Unique among people in her life for a long time, they understood it was the weeping fearful girl haunted by a dreadful secret she mentioned but could not reveal who was the real Azula, a girl who trusted them enough to let them see her true face.

Zuko then handed her a book, an old book. Three hundred years old. A codex, with a name written on it and when she read the book and of the grim and gory figure ringed by flames where skulls were interwoven into the fires and of the Goddess's Creed she took the point.

She did not see that Zuko's look at the look on her face betrayed a moment of doubt, one that he confesssed to in a letter to his uncle, the first and only he'd send to him, as he told him of that reading and of others.

The anger in the response was one of the few times he ever read his uncle's words and it intensified that doubt.

Then the next day Azula, with a cold look on her face casually burned to ashes the gift he'd given her to make up the damage done between them by that moment, and he knew his doubt was wrong. Azula always lies.

And Himiko.....Himiko was like the ocean. The ocean could be a gentle place to be, or it could be a raging tempest. One did not go lightly near Ocean, nor its power. So too with Himiko. He could never tell which Himiko, even if Azula was consistent(ly a cruel and spiteful being whom it was hard for him to accept was a year younger than he was) would be there. The quiet one who seemed to almost fade into the background. Or the figure who drained plants to fuel dreadful power that felt _wrong._ At her worst Azula seemed bent on scaring him to a point that he already had a nightmare or two of her and what she could do. Himiko seemed to take pleasure in gestures meant to _kill_ and her apathy to animals had become replaced by an increased viciousness to them that Azula, even at her worst, had seemed to do halfheartedly.

For a moment he almost believed that the sister he'd grown up with had died in the wake of the Night of Blood and her torment that had preceded it and some terrible Dark Spirit wore her body and looked behind her eyes. She had gone onto that bed broken, marks around her neck like handprints. She had risen as a vicious _thing_ more nearly animal than person at times, or a quiet and pacific person who smiled genuinely and who whenever she healed always spoke in those low, calm voices and she still did heal them all whenever Father's wrath turned to them.

Even Himiko scared him less than Father did these days.

After that time of seeing his bending, Father had taken to spending more time with him on long lectures of the glory of the Fire Nation and its Industrial Revolution. The Fire Nation mastered distance. Time bent the knee to it. The Fire Nation worshiped Agni, that fearful entity he'd read of, and her glories were to be welcomed, for one did not tame nature nor humanity by kind means and soft words. To bring the lesser nations the blessing of the modern world, the Fire Nation would wield terrible things. His father's voice spoke often in a monotone, low, but not soft. A crackling element to his words as if a bonfire made manifest spoke and acted as a man but was no man at all.

If he had a hard time listening to it Zula seemed to be a statue who said nothing at all, and Himiko took the words like the ocean welcomed a ship by a master craftsman.

In the past Himiko had answered to Katara. Now Father never called her by that name and after Zula and he had been baited into hurting her by calling her by that name and her responding to it, they too did not speak it. She had retained her first language (and secretly they did to and in their most secret times, the points where Zula almost seemed like a sister to him they'd begun to speak it as few in the Fire Nation had bothered to learn it) until after that day. Then she had forgotten it and used ice to slice up the few things she had written in what was a script she partially remembered.

Now she was Himiko. Azula accidentally slipped and called her Katara after one of those lectures with a tone he seldom heard from her. Himiko had snarled and quite literally punched her in the face and then walked off and Azula looked at her incomprehensibly.

Then she remembered "This is what created the massacre on the day of blood" and the ways Himiko's new bending _moved her_ and now sometimes Zuko, too, and she understood something of what that 'Witch' that had spoken had to have done. Understanding did not change things and as their relationship changed anger began to slowly and for a time seemingly irrevocably change into hate. Azula knew better than to believe Father, now. If he had lied to them about his words to them and what he thought of them (he had) then he lied about the rest, too.

Himiko seemed to believe with the tenacity of one who had adopted a new belief to replace an old one, and that too worried her.

So she kept the face in public and the private one remained what it was. If nothing else Father did teach her strength and she would endure.

\---------

_Near the end of the second year:_

Zuko was quieter now, about his ideas of Firebending and more careful of where he practiced them. He did not practice them where Father could see and he sought to shun Zula, these days, unless they were forced to be beside each other.

Zula had nothing but contempt for him now, and that stung, and it stung because he'd once believed she cared.

And Himiko was unpredictable and he never knew what could or would set her off.

Himiko had Usaki, Zula had Mai and Ty Lee.

And Zuko? He had books. Stories and novels and poems, histories. Science. Bending and Bending theories.

He could ignore his sister's taunts, her cold words about Mother that seemed laden and burdened with a hate as potent and as heated as the volcanoes ringing the Caldera.

He could ignore his other sister flipping from quiet and almost invisible to forming a shard of ice and holding it at their throats, or firing them at others for her idea of a joke and the cold sound that had replaced her original, quieter, laugh.

He could ignore the sense of regret that he had only written one letter to an uncle who had written him faithfully and was returning soon.

He'd turned twelve, now. He was twelve.

Azula was eleven and she had become something twisted and vicious. Himiko was ten and had awoken at eight with a murderous streak in her that was worsening, not improving, with time.

People disappeared in the dead of night, and the whispers of the Corrective camps became more potent.

Nobles were tried for participation in Conspiracies against the Fire Nation with Judge Vy Zin, the Executioner-Judge giving Agni worship in her old sense from gallows.

Peasants were not given trial, nor were people in the cities.

Houses were empty, and fear grew.

The army reported heroic victories, for of course it did.

The few soldiers who returned back with bodies broken from the war spoke differently, that the generals and Marshal were afraid and that soldiers were asked to take positions they could not hold out of fear of the Red-Blacks and Lord Hideyoshi and his bulging cheeked, bug-eyed grin.

The day that changed his life forever came when both of his sisters went to him. It was Himiko who spoke first, her lips upturned slightly though what was a partial smile did not reach her eyes.

"Father wants to hear from all of us at a war conference. He welcomes dialogue, you know. He wants to hear if a plan does not work."

All Zula said to him was "Be careful, ZuZu. Father doesn't want to hear anything he disagrees with. We won't have to worry about Hideyoshi's ogres, but that's a concept that leaves a whole great many areas where Father can be....creative. _Don't_ question him, ZuZu." _Azula always lies_. If she said Father did not want to hear any questions, of course he did.

Before the conference, Uncle Iroh and Aunt Hino returned and warm words were spoken and they hugged him and Zula both. Himiko stood diffidently aside but had a true, warm smile on her face that did meet her eyes and bowed.

It was in that reunion, and the quiet words spoken as they talked to their aunt and uncle and words overlapped in that way they do when those who love openly and in secret are reunited, a voice intruded.

"Brother, Princess Hino. Good to see you. You too are welcome at this conference."

"Conference, Ozai?" Uncle Iroh's voice was quiet but there was a strain in it that Zula and Himiko noticed but Zuko ignored, basking in the warmth of Uncle Iroh's approval and being next to him.

"Yes, brother. A war conference. I waited until I was sure you had returned. The counsel of the Dragon of the West is always welcome."

As Father turned, their Aunt and Uncle followed him and so did they.

Two years of Ozai's rule fastening itself more deeply. Uncle Iroh gone on a mysterious journey with Aunt Hino he'd spoken of in cryptic sentences and sending letters Zuko was sure had not, at least, gotten any more replies from anyone else other than him.

Then they arrived at the War Room, with a map displaying the full scale of the war, Fire Nation positions marked in gold, Water Tribe in dark blue, Earth in sandy hues. Air, of course, was marked only by a great X and a few strange smaller xs that noted 'to be left alone' in what was Father's own script. Trusting that Azula lied, Zuko prepared to ask a question when the dour and stout Marshal Temujin, face marked on his right side by a nasty scar that ended just beneath his eye where an Earthbender with a very good aim had struck him, and began to discuss a grand strategic offensive, the first in a long time.

Gaoling Province, near-autonomous but not a kingdom in its own right like the deposed Bumi's was, was one of the great manpower hearths of the Earth Kingdom outside the province of Ba Sing Se itself. The Commandery was one of the most famous in the Earth Kingdom for a reason, and its southernmost region, a vast jungle of swamps and rice and inhabitants of this jungle who were easy to invade but impossible even for Azulon's savage legions to conquer, presented a formidable challenge. Only one was fated to take Ba Sing Se, so that was not given a serious prospect.

It would become the most famous and fateful strategic discussion of the reign of Ozai until the coming of Sozin's comet, nine years from that day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Hideyoshi, as the last chapter indicates and this one goes into more detail is based on two individuals. He takes his name and some of his views from the Japanese warlord Toyotomi Hideyoshi. But most of his life is based on the sinister and foul Lavrenti Beria, the most famous secret police boss of the Soviet Union. Ozai is a totalitarian despot, rulers like that derive power from people like this. 
> 
> +The Hammer is based on Vyacheslav Molotov with various elements of other Stalin cronies folded in, as will be clear in further evolutions of these books. The canon goes into relatively little detail of how Ozai (or most Fire Lords) governed in practice while building him up as a despot, so these elements are meant to show that even in a world of magic, tyranny relies on the avarice and greed of the foul and the amoral. 
> 
> ++As befits a Japanese-inspired civilization (with a Mongolian-Turkic inspired north as a part of it) the Fire Nation writes in Hiragana. The Earth Kingdom writes in Chinese script, the Air Nation wrote in Devanagari, and the Water Tribes write in Inukititut.


	14. "Seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The life of all of Ozai's children changes forever in a single day.

_The War Room, Fire Nation Royal Palace:_

In the vision of the overall war, each of the adults in the room could see that even as Ba Sing Se had withstood the great offensive of the Fire Nation, the war was still largely tilted in their favor. Marshal Temujin had defeated two major offensives aimed at Omashu after his initial victory in what he still deliberately pretended was a larger and more well-fought battle than it was. The first had not been, the second and the third had seen his garrison of forty thousand defeat two armies of sixty and fifty thousand, respectively. Those had been bitter battles. 

His still-partially intact belief in his nation's propaganda that had endured after the Second Battle of Omashu had died in a cruel way during the third. Uniquely that one had featured a contingent of the Dai Li, dispatched from Ba Sing Se. King Wu Zi had ordered them sent, and their presence had made it hang on a knife's edge. They had given that army a unique kind of discipline and backbone and it had taken lucky strikes that killed their commander and the most vicious of them and then a sudden massed wielding of the most dangerous kinds of firebending to narrowly decide the battle. Other times the Earth Kingdom army did not so much retreat as fly in a rout headlong. That time they had retreated in good discipline and then returned ten thousand fewer but battle-hardened veterans.

It was that fight that gave Marshal Temujin the hideous scar on his right cheek.

He moved a baton with a set of slashes, showcasing where his armies could, with reinforcements from the Hu Xin Province forces, launch what would be an audacious and sweeping offensive across seven hundred miles. General Jochi, one of his sons who'd risen to high places, would command this drive. On paper it was a breathaking concept, launching an offensive that would, if successful, deprive Ba Sing Se of one of its most powerful remaining allies and sever the remaining southern territories of the Earth Kingdom in two. He became lost in the details, even as Zuko, who had read among other things some rather dry books on the concept of logistics that had proven to his surprise useful here, noticed that the offensive, for all its grand details, was lacking in a few major areas.

As the Marshal noted that the expectation was that the Earth Kingdom, focused on the relief of Omashu, would have few troops available to withstand the offensive in the south and that the troops there would not adjust to the swiftness of the offensive in time to halt it. Yet Zuko had learned enough of military matters to know how to read a map and the map showed great concentration of troops in Gaoling Province. These were among the most dangerously efficient troops of the Earth Kingdom's army, troops that had become masters of retreating in good discipline without a loss of cohesion. Gaoling was extremely fertile and like Ba Sing Se the city had a lake beneath it that could supply the city indefinitely even if it did see the Fire Nation's army reaching there.

The Marshal noted these concepts but breezily dismissed them even as his eyes kept flickering to the Fire Lord. This was not his idea, he would not have conducted this as a single campaign in this way, but Fire Lord Ozai willed it and willed him to speak.

The shadow of Hideyoshi and the Red-Blacks hung over him, and so he continued to lay out Ozai's plan of campaign. Iroh seemed to shift at points seeing the same issues and knowing that at one remove the Royal Family was safe from the Red-Blacks but they were not the only dangerous and murderous force in and around the capital whose wrath was capricious and unforgiving.

When he tapped the baton at the outer defenses of Gaoling, which were not mapped in any great detail though the absence of the war directly touching the region and Earth Kingdom provincialism meant that this was unlikely to mean as much as it would in the Water Tribes or the Fire Nation itself, Zuko finally willed himself to take Himiko at her word.

"I don't think this campaign will work the way you want it to work."

The ginger-haired Temujin* froze for a moment, his eyes turning to Zuko with a hostility that was barely disguised.

"What?" His voice growled for a moment in a dialect the adults in the room either understood or at least understood the meaning of. It was Zuko's first experience in hearing the very different language of the north and he froze in indecision for a moment.

"You are sending men to fight over a distance where they don't have the logistics or the manpower. You are gambling on forces that have fought long, and well by the standard of the Earth Kingdom to suddenly unravel because we march our army to the lion turtle's mouth. At best you might get to the city if the Earth Kingdom is too slow to react at first or to believe that you would do it, but then the army will be dragged into a city battle worse than Ba Sing Se and you could well lose the Army and General Jochi with it."

Marshal Temujin growled again, and then made a point of speaking in the refined court language of the south used in the Fire Nation palace.

"Do not challenge my strategy, boy." Even then for a moment his eyes flickered to the Fire Lord, whose gaze was wrathful and his brows furrowed.

"All I want is for us not to lose our people's lives for nothing."

Marshal Temujin growled, then, and then he snarled: "You dare challenge my honor and my respect for the lives of my men, boy? Then I challenge you to an Agni Kai."

There was silence in the room. Zuko did not see the sudden look of shock and horror on the face of his aunt, uncle, and one of his sisters, nor the grin that went from ear to ear on the face of the other. Most in the room looked to the Fire Lord in shock, as if he could stop the madness about to unfold in front of them. Ozai simply nodded.

"So be it," he growled.

\--------

_Agni Kai grounds:_

Zuko was stripped above the waist, in a place that felt strange. There were sigils here. A face that smiled with grinning fangs and gleaming gems that reflected the light of torches. Red and green gems, at that, and hair of carefully worked gold. This was the ground where the Fire Nation palace held Agni Kais, the duel that had arisen when the new Goddess had likewise, the duels of honor and burning. Offerings of sacrifice by fire and the death of honor, or sometimes of the person. 

The crowd had filtered in, here. Himiko, now seeing herself as fully of the Fire Nation, if not a Firebender, stood near an Azula who carefully shied away from her and was in front of her aunt and uncle. He looked around, further. There were people here, the major nobility of the court. Bloated Hideyoshi in his gaudy robes that pulled up a bit from his feet under the weight of his belly, though he looked for a change somewhat disconcerted. The hulking mass of the Hammer with his mustache and clean-shaven face beyond it, eyes slightly bulging in his face, his hands steepled in front of him but likewise anxious.

That his father's two main servants and two of the most fearsome in the long history of the Fire Nation were there should have been a clue to him as to what would happen but it was not.

It was when his Father stepped in, stripped above the waist, and a cold and fearsome smile on his face that only then he grasped the nature of what must have been arranged there. On that day of days he looked at his family. His Aunt and Uncle looked on in horror and even Azula seemed to display an unusual amount of fear for her, his uncle's hand on her shoulder seeming to prevent her from leaping into the ring. Himiko.... _smiled_.

"By the Undying Flame that ever hungers and is sated by the Gallows and the duel,

By eye of fire and hand of steel, the Agni Kai is invoked."

A gong rang, with a low and mournful sound and then he sensed _eyes_ watching him. Vast eyes, and Iroh and Hino both froze in mute horror. It had been a decade or more since an Agni Kai had been declared here, and even those without a familiarity to the customs of the duel or who had seen it sensed something _watching._ A vast weight seemed to press in and the shadows around the dueling ring seemed to darken.

"Agni is watching us," grinned Ozai. "Her eyes bless this. You disrespected an idea that was not that of Marshal Temujin, my son. You disrespected me.

You have always been weak, and unworthy. No son of mine."

Ozai's hands flared into light, as the gaze that tore into Zuko did so with a sense of brooding hunger and malice and a lust for blood and death. His hands twitched. He felt it too, he wanted to fight. For a moment the vision of his father writhing in pain as he struck his jaw directly with a fireball struck him and he tensed further. Then he remembered the image he'd seen in the book, one marked around here, in imagery of careful make to honor something fearsome that could not be ignored and would be given its due.

His hands twitched and his eyes did likewise.....and then he knelt, refusing to fight, as others gasped, most in fear, Iroh and Hino in a mixture of respect and cautious awe. Azula in fear. Himiko's smile became broader and more unpleasant.

"I will not fight you, Father. This is madness. We would fight over your wasting your soldiers' lives like you waste those of your nobles?"

Zuko knelt. Then he felt _it_ again. Eyes watching him, burning like stars but the light was sickly and diseased and there was a bloodlust that welled up, that sought to strike into him like a blade. Or like a _sickness_. Father basked in that gaze.

"She's watching us, boy. The Goddess of the Gallows. An Agni Kai is a duel to the death, now. You cannot invoke an offering to a Goddess and spurn it."

Zuko stood up. He growled: "No. I will not fight. Not like this."

His father moved toward him then, his left hand glowing with a terrible hellish light. "Agni will have her due one way or the other. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed is king, or so they say." Then that hand _descended toward his face._

There was pain of an unimaginable sort and he heard Azula laughing (but he did not hear the note of warbling fear with an edge of madness to it, even if Ozai did hear that edge and gave her a sharp look that made her cringe. Now he was disciplining his children as he did in private in public. Now his son's face burned in the full weight of his fire as his son began to scream and then fell unconscious. The shadows laughed, then, a dual thunderclap and the darkness seemed to dispel. 

The healers rushed for his son, then, and Fire Lord Ozai walked away without a word.

\--------

_Ozai's chambers:_

"Brother, what have you done?" 

Iroh's voice was harsh and accusatory.

"He invoked a ritual and dishonored myself, our family, our goddess. You cannot invoke that power and spurn it without a price."

"You may have blinded your son in one eye and ruined half his face and that's all you have to say?"

Ozai's stare was reptilian.

"What would you have me say, brother? It's not like our culture hasn't discarded unworthy heirs before. If Zuko is a worthy child of my lineage, he will live. If he should live.....I will give him a sentence fitting to mark his dishonor."

That stare became an equally reptilian thing that was an attempt at a grin.

"I will send him to find the Avatar."

Iroh's dismay was real but mute.

"You would exile a twelve year old boy for life?"

Ozai nodded. "I am proof that the second child can work as heir. And Azula is more than satisfactory. She's like me. No heart, as your wife put it. Fire and brimstone and power and brain, too."

Iroh's face was still and gave away none of his thoughts.

"If you send him in exile, Hino and I shall go with him."

Ozai's grin became more like that of another person, but a vicious and an evil thing that gave Iroh a glimpse of the full malice that animated his brother.

"Very well, that will eliminate all of the failures at once."

Ozai picked at his teeth for a moment, savoring the crudity of the gesture and its contempt.

"You will have an Admiral with you. Zhao."

Iroh stiffened. "Why him?"

"He failed to take the Northern Water Tribes in an offensive that should have gone off spotlessly. A failure far more total than yours. And I gave him an order to assault Kyoshi Island and kill every last person on that island and destroy its shrine and he refused to do so, claiming it would endanger the discipline of his men and make them marauders with uniforms, not soldiers."

Ozai's grin became a snarl.

"You are all too weak for the Fire Nation that I desire to build, so you will all be exiled. Consider this a mercy, brother. Hino still has childbearing years in her yet. I could order you and her to remain here and to endure what my own marriage was. An order to breed like a stud Komodo Rhino."

When Iroh's mask slipped and his fires ignited, Ozai turned pale and seemed to cringe for a moment at the thought of the Dragon of the West awakening from its slumber.

"I will not do that brother," he said, proud that his voice did not stammer even when he wished it, nor that he did not befoul his robes when he was afraid he would.

"I said that I will not. You will go with my unworthy child, who is no son of mine in heart or in any other manner, and you will give him the example of the rewards of weakness. You and that wife of yours.

If he recovers, be gone from the Fire Nation within three weeks of that time."

\-------

Zuko would lie in the bed for three months, feverish. He had nightmares of vast eyes and a vast and shadowy presence squatting in shadows glorying in the honor done its name and then blazing in wrath when it did not. He had a memory of Azula laughing and Himiko's words, cold and taunting. Fire burned, Fire was evil, fire hurt. Their culture claimed honor and offered it to a god unworthy of the offering.

Months lapsed and he was too lost to pain and feverish chills at points and the sheer agony of the burn when the fever broke to notice that Azula would go by his side every day and took the stories he'd read to Katara and read to him, her voice laden with tears. He did not know that the first day she had come in that multiple parts of her body were stiff even with Himiko's arts. He did not know that Azula had brought Himiko to him and begged her on bended knee to heal him, and that Himiko had looked at him levelly and said "He defied father. Defiance is not to be rewarded."

He heard laughter, he heard his sister's sneering voice taunting him for weakness. Unwanted. Unworthy. "No son of mine."

Yet he did not die, and the pain of the burn slowly settled, and in that twilight state of lying there in shame, hair marked in the sign of the old ways and the markings of one who lost an Agni Kai, he heard his sister's voice reading stories of Zuko and the Hydra, of how the Storm God rescued a maiden from the clutches of the Hydra, one of the dark-skinned maidens of water and the south. She who laughed at his burning and taunted him as the inferior and unworthy son of a terrible father could not do such a thing so he believed that he was still lost in his hallucinations.

Three months later he would rise from his bed.

His uncle and his aunt were there and they helped him then to relearn to walk, after those months in bed. Quiet words of strength, encouragement. Even his sister who laughed was there, the one who was silent conspicuous in her absence. Relearning to walk was simple enough, and they helped him to pack up the traces of his life. His books on the Fire Nations's gods and old ways went with him, traces of a life that could have been and would never be again.

He did not say much then and fire terrified him. His own or others.

When the fateful day came, he went to one of the Juggernauts, the iron machines that marked the world. It would take him from the Capital to what had been his Uncle's flagship in his days as the Dragon of the West when he would sail from the Fire Nation to the war. The _Hino_ , it was called, named after his aunt.

It was a great seagoing leviathan, an experimental kind of ship that the Dragon of the West had mentioned. One that could and did transport airships, bringing the mastery of air and sea together. He did not see what would become his home for a long time, until a strange day in the Austral lands when ice cracked and a spear of blue light pierced the heavens, only the Juggernaut. Their goods were stored there, and he stood with Aunt Hino and Uncle Iroh. Stood, hopeless, crippled. A firebender afraid of flame, what a twisted joke that was.

There was a _rage_ in him now, a deep fury at himself that would build for a time, and would not still for what would in the long years of Zuko's life be in truth a time short in duration and yet in shaping his character influential. With his scarred face and blinded eye turned so he could see out of his one good one, he looked at his father and his sisters.

Azula could not meet his gaze and she held her wrist (Iroh's face tightened then. He remembered the argument he'd had with Ozai the day before demanding to take the other two children with him and Ozai's overpowering rage so akin to their father but so much more genuine for all that at the concept of taking away his nation's future to go with the detritus of its past. He had tried, and he had spoken to Azula to tell her. He had given her a dagger, then, from the Earth Kingdom. A careful bit of art worked by a master artisan taken from the course of the Siege of Ba Sing Se. She had taken it with wonder and he had told her to be strong and to write the _Hino_ as often as she could, and to preserve the self in those letters against the time to come).

She then took the risk even with the winces of pain from a wrist that would not be healed for a few more hours of hugging her brother, who did not return it, and slipping back as Ozai told Zuko "You were never my son, and you will never be. A weak son of a weak mother.

Get thee gone from my sight, unworthy one."

And then the Fire Lord and his daughters were gone.

Into the Juggernaut as its horn echoed in a mournful sonorous bellow that smote the air and its engine picked up with that terrible droning. it was his first sight of the sheer immensity of parts of the Fire Nation and of its capital, the route taking him by the vast prison known as the Boiling Rock. He watched in fascination as the countryside went by. Some parts of it were beautiful and others were marked by clouds of smoke and the hellish light of factories, and both alike were the kingdom that he would have inherited, once.

He drank in the sight as Iroh and Hino talked quietly and he paid no attention. Admiral Zhao was already on the flagship, but that name meant nothing to him, then.

After a journey of three days and sleeping in the somewhat bumpy conditions of beds on a railway car, they finally arrived.

Iroh saw a vast metal cliff on the sea, in a port that needed to accommodate an Empire-class battleship, which the Fire Nation capital's port could not. Or would not, perhaps.

It was the vast thing that would be his home for the next two years of a search that had seemingly been in vain.

He stared for a moment and the enormity of what was happening led him to briefly sink to his knees.

He cringed when his aunt and uncle paused but his uncle gave his aunt a brief kiss and told her to go to the ship, which she did with a look of unease.

His uncle knelt beside him and told him in quiet words that he was not alone and he would never be. He held his uncle and wept freely from one eye for a few minutes, and then picked himself up and went to the ship. Even with the rage in him, the moment of loneliness and severing from the world that however terrible it was was all he'd known or would have known, sank in when the door of the ship closed, and he strode down its halls to what would become home away from home. A room, that in itself was only a bit smaller than the one he'd had in the palace, with room for his books.

Zuko was furious but he was so afraid of fire that all he could do was breathe small bursts of fire as measures of his anger, and in that sense of frustration he moved stiffly to unpack things. 

His father sent him to 'find the Avatar?' Fine. He'd see what there was to find, and he would restore his honor. And then, one fine day......

He shuddered. He never wanted to back and yet he did. No time for that now. Now there was setting up his home that would be all that he feared he'd ever know again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *As might be clear from his name, the Fire Nation general in chief of its armies is named after Genghis Khan in this AU. Like Genghis Khan himself, according to sources that described him, he has red hair and green eyes.


	15. 'The old that is strong does not wither, the deep roots are not reached by the frost.'

_Bridge of the hino, the first day:_

The exiled Crown Prince gave Admiral Zhao a crude grunt that seemed surprisingly mature for a child of twelve, but the Admiral did not fuss, nor snort and paw the ground as a bull would have done. Few adult men could have survived what gave him that wound and if the child had come out of it 'normal' he would have feared him more than the being who gave him an angry gaze from one eye (and it seemed he was blind in the other, something that made his face pale and then he gave the Crown Prince a look of pity that the child scorned). 

He turned to the exiled elder brother, once the Dragon of the West.

And then he bowed as he would to the true heir to the Throne. 

"My Lord Iroh." The older Prince folded his arms with a single raised eyebrow and a skeptical look on his face.

"Why are you accompanying us, Admiral?"

The Admiral gave him a strange smile. "I had plans for an attack on the Northern Water Tribe and....failed. Abysmally."

For a moment his mind went to a _scroll_ and the things hidden there, a gift of the spirit Wan Shi Tong. He had needed to be in that place on the night of the Full Moon, and so he was.....and he had not anticipated the sheer raw _power_ of Waterbenders at the height of their own might even against a full force naval fleet of the Fire Nation. The greater design would remain hidden, for now.

But one day, as he mused on the twin images of the sheer stark whiteness of the moon and the rabbit across it, one day he would finish the job. And it would be said of him for the duration of his lifespan that he, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, had slain the Moon itself. It was a vision that spoke to him in strange dreams where he saw the Sun, dread Agni herself speaking to him of glories. Twin voices tempting him to the snows with a great fleet.

And yet when he awoke from those dreams he was sheened in sweat and afraid to look in the shadows lest the shadows _move._

"Searching for the Avatar". A nice, bloodless means to gaze around the world. 

"And," as he let himself continue, "The Fire Lord himself spared me the attentions of the bloated toad. You see he gave me orders to put ashore at Kyoshi Island and to massacre everyone on the island and leave no stone unturned. I refused. Such orders would make my men marauders, little better than the kind of barbarian savagery that Princess...Himiko, I believe her name is, was rescued from. The Wolves of Ice and Snow kill prisoners and make goblets from their skulls. We are above that, or at least we should be." 

Iroh's smile was sickly for a moment, remembering his father's words when he was deep in his cups.

There was, at least, in this confirmation of his brother's story and he grieved that he could not have brought Azula and Himiko here. He hoped that his niece would continue to write him letters. He had a feeling that she needed it, and he had learned much from them. The shame of leaving the two girls with his brother would rankle for a long time, though he and Hino had vowed to show none of that to Zuko, who would need much. He had not been able to save Lu Ten from a cycle he'd grasped too late, but he would save all of Ozai's children. But for now, the one with whom he would be spending years took first place.

The Prince had gone to his room with those words his brother had spoken ringing in his ear. Words that gave him a further inkling into the things that Ursa had said, made him take her words as seriously as he should have taken them all along.

Striding to his own cabin he saw that Hino had already begun setting things up with a grave look on her face. Giving her a tender kiss, he told her to sit for a while and to let him do things as he lost himself in the fullness of his tasks.

_The Hino, first week of the voyage:_

Prince Zuko spent that first week in a time of bitterness. His face burned, and it burned because the wounds dealt were at one level more than mere wounds. His father had tried to kill him, and Zula had laughed and Himiko had refused to heal him and left him with a monster's face. He, a Firebender, could not stand the sight of flame. The Sun, he could endure, but candles? Firebending? He would find excuses to leave and to hide, and that hurt most because what had seemed so natural now seemed something he could not and would not accept. 

That first day he had nodded at the crew at points but he barked orders, in a crude fashion that seemed more like the inner ugliness of his father finally manifesting at last. He could tell, up to a point, that the Crew were not especially glad to have him around. He saw the look of bemusement and even contempt in their eyes when he read books on the Avatar and the cycle thereof, beginning to seek for proof of any such entity existing, still.

There were other ambitions that drove him and gleamed with a molten heat at the edge of his ideas, but he dared not admit even to himself that they were there.

And when the nightmares came, his mother did not show up, not anymore. But....Aunt Hino, and sometimes Uncle Iroh did. And they would remain beside him speaking soft words and he did not understand that. He spent those nights sleepless (even if he kept his eyes closed long enough to hear them leave) out of fear that as his father had burned him for less, that they would too. 

And then they did not.

He didn't understand that. It reminded him of mother, but her kindness was a harder thing to accept as that when she came into his room at night to tell him goodbye and then left without even looking back. All his mother's kindness had gotten her was a prototype of his own fate, cast into the unforgiving harshness of a world at war. And yet there were parts of him that longed for it, that longed to go back to the days when he could feed turtleducks and be with sisters he knew loved him and vice versa. That longed to accept things.

\-------

More time passed and he'd read all the books in the library and those he'd taken from the capital and perused over notes. It was a long and a tedious thing, his days otherwise broken by speaking to his aunt and uncle, and even sometimes to the dour Zhao, who had a surprising cynicism in his way of doing things. He had begun to learn things, listening to the crew, things that hovered at the edge of his mind as he read the information and looked over those notes. The Fire Nation's royals proclaimed the nation united, that all spoke one tongue and obeyed the will of the Fire Lord.

And yet the shorter and more powerful men of the North spoke a language that was completely and utterly alien to his own, which was a more refined variant of the southern dialect. The northerners drank strange drinks of fermented....milk, and that he did not understand either, and spoke of 'the Tingri'. A name that he gathered meant something like the Himiko and Zuko (part of him felt shamed to be named after the Storm-God when he was spending so much time in books afraid to be around people and when he'd failed something he didn't even know he should have succeeded at) and others that the Southerners worshiped.

It was eye-opening to see the northerners, who called themselves Mon-gzhoul, and to learn of that element he had only learned existed there.

A few times he'd dared to speak to his aunt and uncle about it, and where his aunt was faintly amused in a way that led him to blush and feel ashamed, his uncle nodded matter of factly and spoke to him of a few things he should not do around the Northerners and what they would not do around Southerners. He listened to those stories, and the ways that the North and the South differed, and how the Northerners were seen as the better generals and raiders where the Southerners made better soldiers, at the one level, and how the sky-worship of the north contrasted with the sun-worship of the South and yet both were of a kind. 

Tales that were long in the telling and passed him, often told around tea.

Uncle Iroh, for some strange reason, had taken to tea.

He had nothing against it, and like most Southerners he loved the taste (even if Northerners despised tea and the tea ceremony as effeminate in their eyes). But there were few things more boring to him than to sit and undergo the formal time of the tea ceremony, which would take a couple of hours with small cakes and with tales told.

It would take him a long time to understand why he felt calmer, more relaxed, and why the world seemed less cruel and harsh in the wake of that ceremony,and of what it did for him and what it meant for him.

After another ceremony and a story of how the Northerners wielded firebending somewhat differently, with an emphasis more on defensive things, he made a secret vow to himself.

He might be afraid of fire, now, but he would master that fear, and he would relearn it.

He would never, ever, be defenseless again as he was to his father on that day.

\-------

_Two months later:_

His uncle was reading a letter when he'd slipped out. He'd asked who it was from and his uncle had smiled and said it was from Zula. When he'd pointed to letters written to him by Zula as well, Zuko had stormed out then. He remembered her laughter, the ways she'd effortless wielded fire and what happened when her fires turned blue. The coldness of her words and her scorn for him. 

"Dum Dum" wasn't so bad a name when it came down to it. Other brothers and sisters referred to each other that way and he was surprised to see even leathery wind-beaten men of the North using a variant of the phrase in a roughly affectionate sense.

The ways she'd critiqued his form, with a gaze of iron, and had told him he was 'weak! You have a heart that none of us do, and that's why you're weak, Zuzu. You need to be strong!' and harsher things than that....no. He definitely did not want to read, or to acknowledge any letter from Azula. He'd had more than a lifetime's worth of her utter contempt for him, and if he never saw her again it would be too soon.

So with that in his mind, he went to a training area, one wreathed in shadows, to a point. It was in a safe element of the ship, warded by powerful metals and a strange kind of rubbery substance that could repel flames.

He went through his katas, knowing his sister's curt words about the 'sloppiness of his stance' and 'by Himiko's eyes, your hands are about as limp as a fish in a fishmonger's stall!' would ring in his head even if she wasn't there. He shook his head and focused on trying to fix that, and to a degree he was content that he did. And yet the flames did not rise, only a few sparks of bright light that flared and then became as nothing. He did not see that his uncle had followed him and watched him with understanding and concern, nor did he hear him speaking to his aunt and telling her to fix tea, as he had an idea of how to start broaching elements with Zuko that would help them both.

Prince Zuko groaned in frustration. Leaving aside that his face still stung with the physical legacy of his father's fires (and he was too young and too much the boy, then, to understand the emotional elements even as he faced them too), he had a greater shame. He, a firebender, the son of the Fire Lord, no less, was now afraid of fire. From being able to conjure flames and coming so close to lightning, he couldn't even make a single spark.

He stamped his foot in a display of petulance suited to a boy his age and then looked around for a moment, fearfully. For a moment he believed the shadows would show his father's gaze and then the fires..... And then there _was_ someone in the shadows and for a moment he couldn't breathe. When he came to, it was the kindly eyes of Uncle Iroh that met his.

"It's all right, Zuko," his uncle's voice spoke, low and soothing.

"All right?" He growled, feeling a bit of shame at channeling his father.

"I can't even summon a spark."

"Zuko, after what you survived, the miracle is that you're so willing to try again." For a moment he looked at Uncle Iroh in perfect incomprehension.

"But...."

Uncle Iroh shook his head.

"There are many who are stronger benders who would have...." there was silence and a shadow crossed his face.

"I know what my brother taught you. I.....I have learned other ways." Zuko still stared at his uncle, not certain whether to trust what was offered him. H

"If you like, I can show you."

Zuko blinked, and there was another silence for a time. A long time, awkward, and there were little trembles of fear lest his uncle should prove no different to...to him. Then he nodded, after another single slow blink. His uncle smiled then and nodded when Aunt Hino stepped in and brought them tea.

"Now first, Zuko, let us sit and enjoy some tea. It is very relaxing."

Zuko groaned within but sat with his uncle, drinking tea, and listening to his uncle telling him stories about the past and the old legends of his people. As he ate his rice cake quietly, his uncle then, after that first hour lapsed, looked at him and he listened to information on breathing exercises.

That gave him a bit of a jolt.

"Breathing exercises?" His voice cracked slightly, an aura of incredulity sneaking into it.

"How...."

Uncle Iroh shook his head slightly.

"If you want to not be afraid of the fires, my nephew, you have to not be afraid of yourself and of who you are and what you can do. The merit of the breathing exercises is that it makes things......more understandable."

Then his uncle showed him his wisdom and how these would mirror his father's lessons.

"My nephew, stand up and walk a few paces."

Cocking his head and shrugging, Zuko got him and walked, finding nothing unusual or difficult about it.

Then a taesing kind of lilt crept into his uncle's voice.

"Now," he spoke, "walk while focusing on how you step and what your walking feels like."

And all of a sudden what he took for granted was much slower and more halting and he found himself overthinking every little step, not certain if it was him doing this because he did it, or because he thought about it.

"It's different when you think about it, eh?"

Zuko turned and nodded.

"That's why we're going to begin with the breathing exercises. Breathing, too, is something that people take for granted. To deliberately control it and to draw upon it...." his uncle smiled. "It will give you control of yourself, and a means to start without fire, as you learn to lose your fear of it."

Zuko blinked again, slow and level.

"I.....thank you."

And with that walking still in that overthinking element where he found himself overcompensating for elements of his normal gait he sat down in a lotus posture and began the first breathing exercises with his uncle. For a moment the shadows of exile and the search for a legend receded and there was only the exercises.

\-------

_Fire Nation Palace:_

_Dear Zuko,_ Azula placed her characters on her page with extreme care. She knew from her uncle's letters that her brother hadn't read her letters....yet. She had to hope that one day he would. 

_I hear from Uncle that you are recovering and starting to learn to firebend again. I know I said and did cruel things when you did this before. I.....as I wrote to you in other letters, Father demands too much of us. He wants us to be blades that talk and that's not something anyone can ever fully do, I think. I do not mean to state that my actions were any less mine because he insisted that I be cruel, for they are mine and mine alone. Nor am I asking you to forgive things that do not readily lend themselves to forgiveness._

She moved away the brush. This was the more formal-flowery prose she was learning at the academy, writing that was at the edge of poetry but not quite. Until and when her brother responded, she would write like this, not in the more emotional senses of her earlier letters, or those to Uncle Iroh.

 _I am simply noting to you that you have nothing to be ashamed of. You are learning again, when many people would have given up firebending for life. That shows you_ , _Zuzu, that you are much more than you've ever been able to admit....and I do apologize, without expectation you'll accept it, for contributing to that. I_ _regret nothing in my life so much as laughing that day, Zuzu. I was afraid. For you, for me, for all of us. You needed people to support you and I let you down, and I don't know how I'll learn to live with it, but I must. You are not the monster father wanted us to be. I am, and that's all......_

She picked up the brush, and moved it aside, for a moment, thinking, and then applied it to the paper. 

_You are human, my brother, in a way only Mother truly was. I know you're most like her of any of us. Whether she comes back to our lives or not, she lives in you, and that is a thing of hope._

She applied the brush further, writing notes to try to encourage Zuko and to give him things that she hoped could make a difference. 

It was after she was done, and quietly letting the ink dry that her door opened.

It opened quietly, with that dignified grace that ol' stone-face gave to even the most minor actions. But her body trembled and her face was pale.

"Mai?"

She looked at Azula with a look of genuine fear and emotion on that face felt _wrong,_ especially when it was this kind.

Mai choked out "He _looked_ at me."

"Who?"

"Hideyoshi the toad."

Azula's own face went pale and then a look of terrifying anger crossed her face. Mai flinched and expected to hear words upbraiding her the way her father had told her and then Azula told her "Sit down," and she complied, mechanically. "I'll get Li and Lo to bring you tea. Stay here. When you're alone, let yourself cry or do whatever you need. That filthy little bastard" (even in her fear Mai's eyes widened slightly and she raised an eyebrow at that kind of language from the beautiful Azula) "has no business looking at anyone that way. I.....I can't protect anyone in the commoners, or who I'm not close to. You and Ty Lee...."

Mai heard the words but did not fully grasp them until Azula stormed out and then her face's pallor changed to a different kind of fear. She resumed her mask when Li and Lo brought her tea, and she took it gracefully, sitting quietly.

\--------

_Office of the Committee of Royal Security:_

Lord Hideyoshi perused over the latest execution lists. Others like him, he surmised, would have taken less relish in the deeds. They would have called it a list of traitors, or the expendable. Or recalcitrant prisoners. He called it an execution list for this was what it was. His was the power that kept Ozai in power for the fool was incapable of wielding it himself. A coddled palace br-

He looked up. A child in his office, but not one of those he invited in with his flowers and rewarded. 

No mere child, either. Princess Azula. 

Her words were cold. "You were looking at Mai." 

Now that he did not expect. 

"And if I was, Princess Azula?" His voice was low and rumbling and freighted with scorn.

"I know what you do to girls you _look_ at, monster. Do not look at my friends."

"Now now, Princess, be a good little girl and don't interfere in affairs where you do not belong. Besides, you're your father's favorite....now. What would happen if I pointed out to him that his darling girl has hair that matches in shape and in straightness not the royal family, but a palace cook? Or if I pointed out little elements in the nature of the eyes and their golden hue?"

Hideyoshi leaned forward with a reptilian leer on his face.

"I could destroy you, you little brat, with a snap of my fingers by telling Ozai that it is not him who is your father but a cook from your mother's home village. Ikem, incidentally, is his name. You would become less than nothing, and perhaps join your brother in that silly search for a dead legend."

His voice became the guttural rasping growl he used in interrogations.

"Now bugger off." When he smelled ozone and the sheer _power_ of that ozone he suddenly froze. There were sparks of electricity between the fingers of the Princess's left hand.

Now her face, so cold before, was truly furious, an expression he had never seen on her father's face.

"Maybe I wasn't clear, Hideyoshi." Her voice became a snarl of its own. "Look at anyone I care about, and I will _kill you_."

What disturbed the Toad most (he knew of the name and since Toads were creatures that carried venom he did not particularly despise it, and relished its implications) most was that this was an eleven year old girl. The right age for his....favors....and when she told him he would die at her hands, with electricity sparkling between her fingers _he fully believed her._

Face pale, he nodded stiffly, and Azula gave him a sickeningly sweet smile far too mature for someone her age. 

"Glad we had this talk."

And then she stormed out.

\-------

Mai waited in fear and then Azula returned with a bit of a smug aura about her.

She saw Mai sipping her tea and then sat beside her, surprised at the Princess placing her arm around her shoulder.

"Mai," she heard Azula's voice speaking in a calm and authoritative tone, "he won't look at you again. Or Ty Lee. Or anyone I care about."

For a moment a shadow crossed her face.

"I can't do more than that.....now. If I make Father angry, the best I can hope for is what happened to Zuko."

There was something there, and in other statements that she made, an expression that crossed the face of Azula neither smug and arrogant (and with the power to justify both) nor her inconsistently successful attempts at a smile. Her right eye had a bit of a spastic twitch and her lips were thin, her face pale. The look of sheer and utter _terror_ and that made Mai curious, but she wouldn't dare ask Azula for a secret she wasn't entirely sure how to ask her.

"So I'll do what I can. For now."

And then that had around her shoulder brought Mai into something she never got from her own family, and the only people who gave it to her were Ty Lee, and of all people the fearsome Princess of Summer Lightning.

A hug, warm and welcoming, the embrace tight. Her mask cracked then and she wept into Azula's shoulder, pathetically grateful for human contact.

Ty Lee came in later and the look on her face was one far more human and expressive, Mai missing that Azula moved one of her hands from the hug to make a gesture that led Ty Lee to nod.

With that she sat down and the three had a quiet time together interspersed with Ty Lee's jokes, laughter its own small triumph against the shadows of fear cast by the Red-Blacks and the current age and rule of Ozai. 

\-------

_I find myself sometimes wondering, Uncle Iroh, if our family is cursed._

_Grandfather supposedly ordered his own grandson killed. Father is.....father._

_And I too am heartless, cruel. Even if it is a mask and I'm not sure it is, it's one that fits too neatly for my liking._

_I sometimes think if I didn't have these letters that it would become more than a mask, and that makes me....._

The otherwise perfect characters were marred by tearstains. 

_Tell Aunt Hino that I send her my love,_ as he read this out to her. _I didn't see her much, but if she's anything like you, there can only be good where the two of you are together and working together and living together._

_It's nice to know somewhere in this family there is more than war and the idea of....control._

The letter went on from there to write a few of the jokes her friend Ty Lee told, and he smiled at that. 

He would begin to write his reply letter soon enough.

For now, there was the voyage. Zuko had made great progress with the breathing exercises.....and now they were coming up to the Southern Air Temple.

His nephew, for all that he was irascible with the anger that burned him and the fires that were slowly reviving, did want to find out more about what had happened to the Avatar and why.

He dreaded the day that they would arrive at that Temple and what ghosts might remain there, but there were times where one could only learn to live with circumstances rather than dictating them. They were at the edge of where they would make landfall and wander within.

Iroh's eye twitched slightly.

This was going to be unpleasant, but the history of war meant that there were unpleasant things to face. 

His wife looked at him with a cocked head and curiosity and he felt a sick wrenching sensation that even if she had been told the truth (and so she had, again and again) that she had disregarded the warnings.

In many ways, she was a sheltered daughter of the palace who knew nothing of war nor how the battle-hardened Dragon of the West woke up screaming with memories and why he did (nor that this was so common on warships, especially ones that transported ground troops, that none stirred with such screams). In five days she would learn the first of many hard lessons in what her husband had long known.


	16. "An angel said to all the birds of the air: 'Come and Gather together for the supper of the great god, so that you may eat the flesh of kings, generals, and riders, the great and the small' "

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the Southern Water Tribe Zuko discovers a hidden truth of the Fire Nation's war. 
> 
> Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe makes a fateful choice.

_Outskirts of the Southern Water Temple:_

While Zuko marched on determined, some part of him wishing he could find some proof this long-dead legend had any truth to it left, Iroh and Hino were troubled in their own ways. 

Hino did not know the truth then, wondering just what kind of legacies the great battlefield would unleash. She had grown up taught that the Air Nation had reacted to the mistaken view of the murder of Avatar Roku by scheming a surprise attack on the Fire Nation, betrayed by a noble monk in high places. The attack had failed, and in a terrible battle the Fire Nation lost more soldiers than it would at any point until the campaign for the Hu Xin Provinces. Yet there was a brooding menace here about the place, a stench of carrion that seemed more spiritual than otherwise. _Eyes_ that watched with awareness and hostility, and shadows that seemed to move _wrong._ She felt the spiritual aftershock here in the way that seemed to explain why those closest to the spirit world shunned Azulon City, once Xijing.

It ripped into her bones with a deadly cold and she shivered. 

Iroh, for a change, did not see this and he reflected on the 'lesson' his father had given him, the first time Ozai and he had seen the menace behind the man: 

_"My sons," the low and resonant voice of Azulon spoke with raw pride._

_"It is time that I tell you a great secret, that you may know of power and what it is to wield it."_

_Ozai was disinterested and Iroh was curious. Ozai found something fascinating in one of his nails until a small spark of lightning at his ear made him yelp and look to his father._

_Iroh winced, the smell of ozone vivid and with it the sense of heat._

_"You were taught as children, as father insisted you be taught, that the Air Nation waged war against us." Ozai's disinterest began to dull his gaze and even Iroh raised an eyebrow._

_"They did not." Ozai suddenly paid very close attention indeed, their father's face lit by an eerie smile. "They did not. Avatar Roku, you see, truly was murdered by your grandfather in the time of his great comet. He was overpowered in the fullness of his strength, shot in the back by lightning. Your grandfather knew under the cycle that the Avatar would be born in the Air Nation next, and so he undertook the first plan of the war, one so audacious that none have dared to match his Final Solution to the Air Nation problem since. As one our soldiers were transported in the first use of air transportation. Your grandfather's sense of humor, you see. To defeat the Air Nation he turned their very element against him and it did not warn them. Perhaps that was Agni's blessing, perhaps a spiritual nation of pacifists could not imagine what even the rest of the Fire Nation dared not believe."_

_Their father's voice was rich now, animate, as he savored the words that came next with the fullness of his being._

_"And so we came upon a nation in peace, monks, women, children. Infants. Animals. We killed them all. A Final Solution, as I said. Death solves all problems, no men, no problems. The Air Nation, for all that they were pacific, were not pacific unto destruction. When they realized they faced extermination they fought. There were indeed battles in each of the temples. The Monk Gyatso, the mentor of the old Avatar, personally slew around five hundred of our soldiers and died at your grandfather's own hands ringed by the last hundred he slew. A costly thing, but something so total that nothing could and did survive. The Air Nation is no more."_

_Then he leaned forward. Iroh was horrified beyond words and Ozai was revolted (though Iroh could not quite reconcile Ozai's disgust then with what Azula's letters had told him was unfolding now. And yet he remembered that vividly)._

_"I want you to understand that, my sons. When the throne demands it, one of the four fundamental principles of the universe will melt like snow before the Summer Sun."_

And now here they were. 

Hino's hand slid into his own and now he understood her trembles for he felt it, too. The brooding aura here and a presence that savored the elements of death and of the dead, squatting over them with an immensity made more malignant by centuries of nothing challenging it. 

The Western Air Temple had new inhabitants who had redeveloped some of the old Air Nation technological principles. In their travels, they had found that Azulon had indeed spoken a truth when he said the old Air Nation would never revive again. The aura was strong here. 

And then Zuko, arriving at the gates, stopped for a moment. 

He was not as spiritually sensitive as they were but at the very gates of the place one did not need to be, not like this. 

\--------

Zuko ran into the Air Nation Temple, disregarding his aunt and uncle's call. 

This was a silent place, redolent with menace in a sense that he did not understand, not then. He was still twelve and while more familiar than many adults would have been with the lesser horrors of a father who slaked his sadism and lust for absolute power on those to whom he held it before his rise to power, he did not understand the nature of what war was and what the legacy of it could be. 

Silence. Utterly, totally. Unstoppably. 

It was an eerie thing where his own heartbeat and the impact of his feet echoed like thunderclaps. As if some malignant voice had spoken a terrible word and then all life had stilled. 

He heard a few birds chirping and it made him stop. In this place it sounded unnaturally loud, like something singing a haunting tune at the one hand, and like laughter in a place where it did not belong in another. 

In the shadows he felt _eyes_ watching him and when he realized even his blind eye could see something he ran further, ignoring his uncle's shouts, as his uncle's tread followed him. 

And then he saw why things were silent. The first bones, lots and lots of bones, some few with tattered traces of fabric. 

Many had small fractions of Fire Nation fabrics around them. The first set of bones he saw were like this, a vast ring of Fire Nation soldiers and in the midst of that ring a single figure with small traces of orange fabric. He fell to his knees, sickened at the sight, and the lunch he'd eaten before arriving at the Air Temple was expelled in a messy fashion. 

He heard his uncle then and he felt him pick him up in his arms and move him away as if he were a much younger child. In the midst of the horror and the recognition that there were more bones like this, he made no efforts to resist, simply crying into Iroh's shoulder. Iroh was pale, and horrified himself, and he only knew some of that by the way his uncle's shoulders trembled. Hino's steps followed and then she screamed, and that scream was like a thunderclap in its own nature, a single peal of anguish and horror, and Iroh shook his head, sighing. 

"That was why we were calling your name, my nephew. This.....your grandfather spoke of it to me once. He called this the price for power and for the ability to be a master race that rules where others are ruled." 

Iroh's eye twitched, and then Hino stepped in, her face pale and stunned and she fell to her knees with a hardness that made both Iroh and Zuko wince. 

"You....you weren't making that up," she rasped, her voice wheezing. 

Iroh shook his head. "No. My father lied to my brother and I about many things, but that? As with Xijing we knew he wasn't lying about that." 

"Xijing?" 

"You will learn that story when you're older, Zuko. We could not stop you then, because you are younger than us and it is easier for someone your age to climb stairs and run longer." 

Zuko blinked and shuddered. 

"What have we done, Uncle? What are we becoming?" 

Iroh sighed. 

"I don't know, nephew. I began to see some of this at the Siege of Ba Sing Se but to see thus? It's one thing when it's war being war, when armies fight and soldiers battle and kill each other for the sake of something grander. This?" 

His sigh was deeper. 

"What is so in one sphere is echoed in another. We began this war with a genocide," the first use of a word that would be applied to the Fire Nation in later years, beginning in its own period of self-examination and taken up by others, "that is to say, the extermination of a people. We have used lesser ones in various areas since. We have defined entire battles that were one-sided massacres, though this one became a battle in its last phase, my father said. I believe him. Seeing the bones of old Monk Gyatso like that..." 

Zuko's eyes, even the blind one, widened. 

"That was Monk Gyatso? Roku's mentor?" 

Iroh nodded. 

"Yes. He fought hard. Father said he killed five hundred of our soldiers and now I believe every word he said then was true after all." 

He sighed. 

"War is an ugly and a filthy thing, my nephew. You have seen just one element of what it can do. I have seen more of it than you or your aunt. That is why I wake up screaming at night, sometimes. It happens to all soldiers who've seen combat, for we have seen and we endure the very most evil things that people can do to each other." 

He sighed once more, a great weariness setting in. 

"You have seen a small taste of its ugliness. This was once holy ground, a place hallowed by long study in the spirit world's nature and of the disciplines of the Air Nation. Few places matched it in its glory, only the Eastern and Northern Temples came close and both were far distant. A place of contemplation, of knowledge. And our soldiers stormed it from sky-ships and laid it waste, sacking it like the true savages we declare the Water Tribes to be. And that, nephew, is what it was to wage the greater war." 

Zuko looked at his uncle with concern. 

"You have nightmares too?" 

Iroh nodded. "You can't spend years serving in a war without having them. It is why nobody judges you, nephew. Even the crew that are.......shall we say, as yet not acquiring the taste of your personality, and of who you are and what you are, understand that. They worry, because you are twelve. You have come from the Fire Nation palace, and you have a soldier's dream-cycle interrupted by nightmares." 

Zuko's face went very still for a moment and in a very small voice he whispered "Do they know?" 

Iroh's face became as impassive. "Admiral Zhao and Lieutenant Commander Jee suspect. As do others. They don't judge you. They.....you, I, and your Aunt Hino are of the royal blood. Soldiers directly under us are spared the.....focus...of the Red-Blacks. For this alone they are loyal to us over your father, if we were to dare to consider that. Not that we would, of course." 

Zuko was proud of himself that his face kept still when he heard those concepts. Once they would have been unthinkable. When he'd seen his sister Himiko prove herself a monster who haunted his dreams and Zula's torments that mirrored his father's blurred into them likewise, and the burn that still stung his face and had taken half his sight were reminders...now it was not. 

He had thought he understood what it was to be around a monster, and to know one. But this? 

"Uncle," he said, his voice cracking and a broken tone creeping into it. "Can anything fix this? Fix us?" 

A silence followed, awkward, the sound of birds echoing in that unnatural loudness, having a strange element of starting to synchronize with their breathing. 

"The Avatar could, if he was found," was what his Uncle said when the moment passed. 

Zuko blinked. "If this is true of the other temples," and Iroh nodded, a look of grave sorrow on his face at the thought. 

Zuko blinked again and more silence.

"Father doesn't want me to come back, does he?" It was a different question and a different kind of question, even if his voice had a sharper set of cracks in it. 

Iroh shook his head. 

"I think once I might have done anything to go back," Zuko mused, sounding for a moment like someone much older as shadows seemed to dance behind his eyes and he clutched his wrist with familiarity from his father's discipline. 

"Now...." silence again. Then he continued: 

"Now if we find the Avatar, I sometimes think I might join him." 

He looked at the ground and tried to curl up some in case his aunt and uncle would burn him as his father had, for daring to express that kind of statement. His father had made the capital a choking place of fear and the kingdom with it. He did not want to go back there, not in truth, honor or no honor. 

"Father...." he spoke, not seeing how his aunt and uncle alternated between looking at him and each other. "Father took from me everything except my honor." 

He clenched his hand then and in a single moment of utter clarity, an aura of ozone crept into the air and the birds were silent, the world seeming to hold its breath. Iroh and Hino's hair stood on end and they both looked at Zuko in wonder, before a bolt of lightning struck the ground, and a peal of thunder followed. Zuko saw that and his own eyes widened with awe, as he growled in a voice that for a moment gave hint to the voice that the future man would have, a voice in its own way a softer, kinder version of his father's. 

"If honor is all my father has left me, then it is what I will have." 

They nodded, and from there they turned away from the house of the dead, where the peal of true thunder continued to echo. 

_Eyes_ still watched them, cold and indifferent and yet gazing with a continued element, that aura only vanishing when they were back on the _Hino_ and sailing away. From the southern, now, to the eastern. 

This time Zuko vowed he would be more cautious. 

And he talked to his uncle about the idea of how to honor any of the dead he could find, as what was left to him should be left to them, likewise. 

\--------

_Inuk Village, Southern Water Tribe, a month later:_

Kya's eyes were moist with tears she was too proud to let fall. 

"I don't want you to go, Hakoda," she said, as they broke one last fervent kiss. 

"An omen dream like this? The Hydra and the Wolf?" 

She whimpered. "Nothing good will come of it. We lost Katara, I don't want to lose you, too. Or anyone." 

Hakoda sighed, resting his forehead on hers, their arms together. 

"I know. And yet...." 

They remained in a silence with arms wrapped around each other. 

"The cub's eyes changed, Kya. They changed. They were _her_ eyes. And I know that's not a coincidence." 

"You're one man, Hakoda. You'd seek to infiltrate a nation that if the rumors are true is devouring its own, now, as it devours the world." 

Hakoda nodded. "That, I think, is what will make my task easier. The Fire Nation is a den of fear, now. Its thugs are good at killing and forcing silence, but I don't think they'd be able to detect me even if they wanted to." 

Now the tears fell and Kya pulled Hakoda to her more firmly and she whispered in his ear with fierce determination. 

"You come back to me love, and you come back alive." 

One last kiss, and he looked her in the eyes as they held hands. 

"On my very soul, I promise you. I will come back alive." 

As he strode out with his full complement of warrior goods, it was the last time that Hakoda and Kya would see each other for many and many a year. 

\---------

_Dear Uncle Iroh,_

Iroh read the letter, as the _Hino_ continued its voyage, still a good couple of months away from the location of the eastern temple. 

_The capital is still more ridden with fear now than it was. Father has arranged for more arrests of people in the so-called White Lotus Conspiracy._

_If this conspiracy were as big as he says it is, the capital would be a domain of traitors._

_If it were as powerful as he says it is, Zuko would be welcomed back as Fire Lord, or perhaps you would be._

_Father thinks nobody else notices, that people are too afraid to notice. I don't think he's right on that._

_I think people notice this just fine, but they are too fearful to say that they do, and that means that he has fear adulterated by cynicism._

As he looked at the margins in the letter, he couldn't resist a grim chuckle for a moment, the old Dragon of the West resurging. Hideyoshi's quests for non-existent traitors stood a very good chance to make a real one. 

Then he noticed a character written in the margin that made him turn pale. _Kemikurage_ , named after the old and dreadful spirits, the beings of fear before the coming of Agni. 

For a child of eleven, Azula was alarmingly perceptive. If it were not for the kind of damage so clearly evident in her writing he would have been amazed that Ozai could, in spite of himself, teach people this. With that damage, it made him wince to think that Azula and Himiko were stuck in that situation. 

Azula was careful in her letters in a way, because she ended them with a long set of transcriptions of her friend Ty Lee's jokes, the kind of things meant to catch a censor's eye, if one read the mail of the Royal Family (not that in theory even the Red-Blacks should have, but). 

And yet, as he read them, Iroh wondered. 

At one level, it would be easy to storm Ozai's throneroom and to kill him and Hideyoshi. That option tempted him more than he was willing to admit even after what he'd learned. 

And yet......Roku had spoken to him in that temple. He had promised that one day the Avatar would return, and that Iroh would have a part in those events. 

Iroh believed Roku's spirit very strongly, and he could not resist a bit of an ironic self-indulgent thought that it was he who truly believed at a certain level in the quest, where Zuko had found a new purpose and a new outlook on life, one that he feared would reinforce some of his more acquired traits he'd need to overcome for a while. Zuko was a survivor who was not yet able to admit it, and he understood at another level elements in why he'd so fervently embraced honor, and even a bit of a bullying attitude in himself. Zuko had seen horrors, smaller and greater. He was starting to understand what had taken Iroh two years of deep delving into the spirit world to begin to understand, but Iroh was a grown man who'd had a long time to absorb things and again, it had taken him years. 

A boy of twelve, even with small parts of him much older and made so by the brutish cruelty of his brother, could not be expected to. 

It would be a rougher path to get Zuko to fully unlearn things, in some ways, and much easier than others. 

If nothing else the ways Zuko responded to simple compassion without anything ulterior in it meant it would be simply a matter of time and patience. 

As he took out his brush and began to compose his reply letter to Azula, he wished he knew if Princess Himiko even read his letters or not. 

Azula said little about her, save a few comments where even in brushstrokes of painstakingly perfectionist clarity there was an element of fear in those characters one did not need Hino's gifts to read. 

He sighed then, feeling for a moment much older than he was and understanding that in Zuko much more than Zuko would begin to understand for some years yet, and then placed the brush to paper. 


End file.
